Strengthening the STEM High School-to-Workforce Pipeline for Urban, Low-Income Students

加强城市低收入学生从 STEM 高中到劳动力的渠道

• 批准号: 2221030
• 负责人: Stacy Ruvio
• 金额: $ 74.83万
• 依托单位: D'Youville College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-10-15 至 2027-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2221030&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Strengthening; STEM; Workforce; Pipeline; Urban

This 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 D'Youville College. Over its five-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 13 unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in biology. First-year biology majors will receive four-year scholarships. The project aims to increase persistence and foster students' STEM identity through faculty mentoring, cohort-building, ePortfolios, and gamification curriculum embedded into biology courses. Internships and research experiences will benefit scholars, faculty, and local industries. This project will contribute new knowledge to the field of biology education and will help to address a pressing need in the Western New York region for highly qualified biologists. The overall goal of this project is to increase biology degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. D’Youville University, though this project, will achieve the following objectives: (1) Recruit a diverse applicant pool and provide scholarships for 13 low-income, academically talented students with unmet financial need; (2) Achieve first-year retention rates of 80% and a four-year graduation rate of 70% for the cohort; (3) Provide 100% of scholars with career-development activities to enhance their post-graduation success in obtaining STEM employment or acceptance into a graduate-degree program; and (4) Investigate how an innovative gamification approach in the biology pedagogy and the use of ePortfolios impact student engagement, success, and STEM identity for low-income biology majors in STEM. Gamification is a high-impact practice shown to increase student engagement in computer science, and ePortfolios are a demonstrated high-impact practice to build STEM identity broadly. However, there are gaps in the literature for the use of gamification and ePortfolios in biology; the data collected for this project will help to fill those gaps. In addition to educational research, the mixed-methods, culturally informed evaluation will explore potential impacts of the program on desired metrics (i.e., participant sense of belonging, self-efficacy, persistence, and retention in STEM). Dissemination activities will target the D’Youville community, the local K-12 community, and area STEM industry as well as broad national stakeholders. 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.

该项目将通过支持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求，通过支持在D'Youville College中表现出的财务需求的高分，低收入学生的保留和毕业。在五年的持续时间内，该项目将为攻读生物学学士学位的13名独特全日制学生提供奖学金。一年级生物学专业将获得四年奖学金。该项目旨在通过教师的心理，构建，ePortFolios和嵌入生物学课程中的游戏课程来提高持久性并培养学生的STEM身份。实习和研究经验将使学者，教职员工和地方行业受益。该项目将为生物学教育领域提供新知识，并有助于满足纽约西部地区对高素质生物学家的紧迫需求。该项目的总体目标是增加生物学学位的完成，以表现出的财务需求，低收入，高成就的本科生。 D'Youville University虽然这个项目将实现以下目标：（1）招募一个适用的游泳池，并为13个低收入，学术才华的学生提供奖学金，具有未满足的财务需求； （2）达到该队列的一年级保留率为80％，研究生为70％； （3）为100％的学者提供职业发展活动，以增强其在获得STEM就业或接受研究生学位课程方面的毕业后成功； （4）研究生物学教学法中的创新游戏化方法以及ePortfolios的使用如何影响学生在STEM中低收入生物学专业的学生的参与，成功和STEM身份。游戏化是一种表现出的高影响力实践，可增加学生参与计算机科学的参与，而ePortfolios是一种广泛建立STEM身份的高影响力实践。但是，在生物学中使用游戏化和ePortfolios的文献中存在差距。为该项目收集的数据将有助于填补这些空白。除了教育研究外，混合方法，文化知情的评估还将探索该计划对所需指标的潜在影响（即参与者对STEM中的归属感，自我效能感，持久性和保留率）。传播活动将针对D'Youville社区，本地K-12社区以及地区STEM行业以及广泛的国家利益相关者。该项目由NSF在科学，技术，工程和数学计划方面的奖学金提供资金，该计划旨在增加具有在STEM领域获得学位的经济需求的低收入才华横溢的学生的数量。它还旨在改善未来STEM工人的教育，并为低收入学生的学术成功，保留，转移，毕业以及学术/职业途径提供知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响来评估的珍贵的支​​持。