Improving Transfer Academic, Career and Community Engagement for Student Success in Engineering and Computer Science

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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 the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas). Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to thirty unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and software engineering. Transfer students will receive up to three-year scholarships. The project aims are to increase student persistence in engineering and computer science by linking scholarships with supporting activities proven to be effective, including a new orientation program, mentoring, peer tutoring, professional development and career preparation, and participation in the Design and Engineering Experiences Projects (DEEP) program. In the DEEP program, students will complete team projects under the guidance of a faculty coach, thereby providing students with valuable teamwork, project management, and problem-solving skills. The project also supports co-curricular improvements aimed at improving professional skills and career preparation of engineering and computer science students. By strategically addressing barriers that impact high-achieving, low-income transfer students, this project has the potential to increase students’ access to engineering and computer science degrees and career success. Four specific goals guide this project. First is to increase one-year retention and four-year graduation rates of engineering and computer science transfer students. Second is to improve the sense of belonging and professional identity of these students. Third is to facilitate entrance of graduates into the STEM workforce or STEM graduate degree program after their bachelor’s degree. Fourth, and finally is to create a multivariate predictive model to understand the impacts of financial aid on student outcomes. There are many factors that affect transfer student persistence in STEM including financial need, sense of belonging, navigating their new institution, and transfer shock. This project will examine whether by providing transfer students financial resources and experiences that increase their belonging and increase their engineering identities while departmental and institutional barriers are removed, student success will increase and students will enter the STEM workforce or matriculate into graduate school after graduation. The plan for knowledge generation includes an efficacy study and robust external evaluation designed to establish how the program activities contribute to students’ success and sense of belonging, and the impacts of financial supports on outcomes related to enrollment yield, retention, hours worked, and graduation. Results of this project will be made available to the general public, practitioners and leaders in the STEM workforce and the STEM education research community through for example publications in refereed journals, conference presentations and papers, social media, and podcasts. 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.