Collaborative Research: Improving Access to Career and Educational Development for Talented, Low-Income Students through the Flexible Internships-Research-Education Model

该项目将有助于对受过良好教育的科学家，数学家，工程师和技术人员的国家需要，通过支持高成就，低收入的学生在莱斯大学，得克萨斯州南方大学，草原视图A M大学和杰克逊州立大学证明经济需要的保留和毕业。在所有四个合作机构中，该项目将支持大约220名来自低收入背景的学术才华的国内学生，这些学生具有明显的经济需求，可以攻读并完成工程，计算机科学，数学和数据科学的硕士学位。学生将从三个技术轨道之一的学科中选择：生物技术;可持续性和弹性;和数字孪生。(The后者指的是使用系统的虚拟模型，该模型用实时数据更新并用于支持模拟和决策。该项目的核心是根据初步的学生数据和关于学者成功和劳动力发展的文献，精心设计的奖学金，学术和职业发展，指导和队列发展的组合。方案要素的结构是为了消除障碍，促进学生成功入学、毕业和进入劳动力市场。而不是专注于传统的教育模式，往往建立了研究经验和实习之间的二分法，导致单一的职业道路，灵活的实习研究教育（FIRE）模式在这里采用的目的是让学生的经验，研究和实习相结合，由劳动力合作伙伴促进，在本科和研究生水平。为此，该项目的一个重要组成部分是与工程师研究和发展中心建立伙伴关系，该中心是专门从事民用和军事工程、地理空间科学、水资源和环境科学的主要雇主。（1）增加国内低-收入学术上有才华的学生证明经济需要获得硕士学位，并进入美国STEM劳动力的关键需求领域;（2）实施和评估FIRE模型对学生成功的影响;（3）实施，研究和传播多团队系统模型，以促进职业和教育发展。学者将根据他们的入学年份以及他们选择的技术轨道成为多学科，多机构队列的一部分，并将由教师和从业人员指导。该项目的混合方法的研究计划是由三个主要的研究问题为中心，更好地了解多机构团队的功能。 首先，不同学科/组织中的个人的不同规范、价值观和优先事项如何体现在团队合作问题中，如沟通和工作风格的差异？第二，整体组织文化如何与多团队系统中的每个学科或团队的文化相互作用，以及混合文化如何影响冲突解决？最后，领导结构和机构或团队水平的条件如何支持团队目标的合作和进展，在这种情况下，学者的成功学术成果？主要的数据来源包括访谈、对学者和领导团队成员的调查以及学生成功的衡量标准。 项目材料、调查结果和成果将向STEM教育界广泛传播。该项目由NSF的科学，技术，工程和数学奖学金计划资助，该计划旨在增加低收入学术人才的数量，这些学生表现出经济需求，并获得STEM领域的学位。它还旨在改善未来STEM工作者的教育，并产生关于低收入学生的学术成功，保留，转移，毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Rice University, Texas Southern University, Prairie View A&M University, and Jackson State University. Across all four partner institutions, the project will support roughly 220 academically talented domestic students from low-income backgrounds with demonstrated financial need to pursue and complete master's degrees in engineering, computer science, mathematics and data science. Students will select from among disciplines in one of three technical tracks: biotechnology; sustainability and resilience; and digital twinning. (The latter refers to the use of a virtual model of a system that is updated with real-time data and used to support simulations and decision making.) The core of the project is a carefully crafted combination of scholarships, academic and career development, mentoring, and cohort development based on preliminary student data and the literature on scholar success and workforce development. The programmatic elements are structured to remove barriers and to foster students’ successful matriculation, graduation, and entry into the workforce. Rather than focus on traditional education models that often set up a dichotomy between research experiences and internships that lead to singular career paths, the Flexible Internships-Research-Education (FIRE) model employed here is designed to give students experiences that integrate both research and internships, facilitated by workforce partners, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Towards this end an important component of the project is a partnership with the Engineer Research and Development Center, a major employer specializing in civil and military engineering, geospatial sciences, water resources, and environmental sciences.The objectives of this project are to: (1) increase the number of domestic low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need obtaining master’s degrees and entering the US STEM workforce in areas of critical need; (2) implement and evaluate the impact of the FIRE model on student success; and (3) implement, study, and disseminate a multiteam systems model for collaboration toward career and educational development. Scholars will be part of multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional cohorts based on their year of matriculation as well as their chosen technical tracks and will be mentored by faculty and practitioners. The project’s mixed-method research plan is guided by three principal research questions centered on better understanding how multi-institutional teams function. First, how do the varied norms, values, and priorities of individuals in different disciplines/organizations manifest in teamwork issues such as communication and work style differences? Second, how does the overall organizational culture interact with that from each discipline or team within the multiteam system, and how does the blended culture impact conflict resolution? Finally, how do leadership structures and institutional or team-level conditions support collaboration and progress towards team goals, in this case successful academic outcomes for scholars? Major data sources include interviews, surveys of scholars and leadership team members, and measures of student success. Project materials, findings and outcomes will be disseminated widely to the STEM education community. This project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.