Promoting Student Persistence, Learning, and Understanding Through an Expanded MESA Program

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With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to expand Bakersfield College’s Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement (MESA) program and study the impact of its various aspects on student success. MESA participants at Bakersfield College have improved course completion rates and other outcomes, and are on a path to graduate with an associate degree in a STEM discipline and/or transfer to four-year institutions. The project has three main goals: (1) expand the number of MESA program student participants from 107 to 200 students per semester to establish a baseline for future study and give preliminary insight to challenges that might exist for further expansion; (2) determine which of the general MESA program components have the greatest impact on student success; and (3) build awareness and explore how to better integrate MESA into the Guided Pathway organization of Bakersfield College. Major components of the MESA program that will be explored include workshops, informal and peer mentoring, volunteering in the community, undergraduate research, opportunities to attend conferences, industry and laboratory field trips, and job shadowing. Understanding how to grow the program while maintaining positive outcomes will provide important insights, particularly for community colleges that serve rural populations as they look to implement successful strategies for bridging the gap for underserved groups to access the STEM professions.Often at community colleges, the path to transfer in STEM takes longer than two years and the number of students who successfully transfer can be low. This project will contribute to the knowledge base in STEM education by studying how key components of Bakersfield College’s MESA program, which accounts for 48% of STEM pathway degrees while only engaging 6% of STEM pathway students, can be scaled up without diminishing outcomes. Major data sources include focus groups of current MESA program participants, a survey of MESA graduates, and a survey to gauge awareness of the MESA program across the proposing institution. The expected results are to identify the critical elements of the program needed to increase the number of participants and maintain its level of effectiveness. The results of the research study will be disseminated amongst similar institutions, particularly those that serve large minority populations and may be looking for scalable strategies to support STEM degree completion. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of the HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs are supported by this program.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.