Improving Retention Rate and Success in Computer Science Scholars in a Historical Black University

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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 Tuskegee University, a historically black university located in the “Alabama Black Belt” region. Over its 6-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 24 unique full time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in computer science and information technology. First-year students will receive four years of scholarships. This project aims to improve student retention rate, graduation rate, and academic performance in computer science by linking scholarships with effective supporting activities. This project will take steps to identify the scholars with high attrition risk employing an early-alert system that makes use of risk factors for attrition, such as attendance rate, academic outcomes, mathematics proficiency, sense of belonging in computer science programs, psychological sense of community, and perceived value of computer science. As soon as the scholars with high attrition risk are identified, the project team will make an intervention plan for each one of them, including assigning a peer tutor to help the student, offering advising by other faculty, and recommending learning resources and activities. These include academic advising, peer tutoring, peer-cooperative learning, peer mentoring, a living learning community, undergraduate research experiences, and career planning. Peer tutoring and peer-cooperative learning will assist students to become independent learners and learn course material in a deeper and more concrete way. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project will investigate the effects of the factors on first-year student retention, 4-year degree completion, and academic performance. This project has the potential to advance understanding of persistence and graduation of undergraduate students in computer science programs at HBCUs. This project will be evaluated using a mixed-methods approach using formative evaluation data collected throughout the project to ensure the activities are implemented as planned and to obtain feedback that will be used for project improvement. Results of this project will be made available through websites, academic conferences, workshops, and journal publications. 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.