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

该项目将通过支持莱斯大学、德克萨斯南方大学、Prairie View a&m大学和杰克逊州立大学中表现出经济需求的高成就低收入学生的保留和毕业，为全国对受过良好教育的科学家、数学家、工程师和技术人员的需求做出贡献。在所有四个合作机构中，该项目将支持大约220名来自低收入家庭的有学术天赋的国内学生，他们有经济需求，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。学生将从以下三个技术方向中的一个学科中进行选择：生物技术；可持续性和复原力；还有数字孪生。（后者指的是使用实时数据更新的系统虚拟模型，用于支持模拟和决策。）该项目的核心是精心设计的奖学金、学术和职业发展、指导和基于初步学生数据以及关于学者成功和劳动力发展的文献的队列发展的组合。课程元素的结构旨在消除障碍，促进学生顺利入学、毕业和进入劳动力市场。传统的教育模式往往将研究经历和实习分开，导致单一的职业道路，而这里采用的灵活实习-研究-教育（FIRE）模式旨在为学生提供整合研究和实习的经验，由工作伙伴促进，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与发展中心建立伙伴关系，该中心是专门从事土木和军事工程、地理空间科学、水资源和环境科学的主要雇主。该项目的目标是：(1)增加有经济需求的国内低收入学术人才获得硕士学位，并在急需的领域进入美国STEM劳动力；(2)实施和评估FIRE模式对学生成功的影响；(3)实施、研究和传播多团队系统模式，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方向，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。该项目的混合方法研究计划以三个主要研究问题为指导，这些问题以更好地理解多机构团队如何运作为中心。首先，不同学科/组织中个人的不同规范、价值观和优先事项如何体现在沟通和工作方式差异等团队问题上？第二，整个组织文化如何与多团队系统中每个学科或团队的文化相互作用，混合文化如何影响冲突解决？最后，领导结构和机构或团队层面的条件如何支持协作和团队目标的进展，在这种情况下，学者们取得了成功的学术成果？主要的数据来源包括访谈、对学者和领导团队成员的调查，以及对学生成功的衡量。项目材料、研究结果和成果将广泛传播给STEM教育界。该项目由美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，旨在增加有经济需求的低收入学术天才学生在STEM领域获得学位的人数。它还旨在改善未来STEM工作者的教育，并为低收入学生提供有关学业成功、留校、转学、毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.