Sustaining Undergraduate Classroom and Career Excellence for Science and Engineering Students

维持理工科学生的本科课堂和职业卓越

• 批准号: 2221227
• 负责人: Kristopher Williams
• 金额: $ 150万
• 依托单位: DOANE UNIVERSITY
• 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: 2022-10-01 至 2028-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2221227&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Sustaining; Undergraduate; Classroom; Career; Excellence

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 Doane University. Doane is Nebraska's oldest liberal arts institution, founded in 1872. The project is centered at the rural, residential undergraduate campus in Crete (30 miles from Lincoln). Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 30 unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, engineering, or environmental and earth sciences. First-year students will receive up to four years of scholarship support. Doane’s recruitment efforts will involve partnering with regional high schools with diverse populations and high numbers of students from low-income families. A range of educational and personal supports will be leveraged and designed to enhance students’ academic success, development of STEM identity, and persistence in the program to graduation. This project will continue, enhance, and expand coursework that strengthens partnerships and interdisciplinary connections between Doane STEM programs; provide a living learning community for students; connect students to STEM professionals through co-curricular activities; provide formal and informal mentoring; and provide opportunities for faculty-mentored undergraduate research as well as externally funded STEM research. To most effectively support students, up to 30 STEM faculty will be trained in research-based best practices in STEM mentoring of undergraduates, including cultural competency training. Broader impacts of the project will include helping to meet the growing demand for STEM graduates in local and regional industry by supporting 30 low-income, academically talented STEM majors with financial need and by increasing Doane’s overall production of diverse highly qualified STEM majors, including those from rural or very rural communities. The intellectual merit of the project includes broad dissemination of the results of a robust project evaluation that will measure (a) the effectiveness and impact of individual project activities on student retention and graduation, and (b) how the development of a strong STEM identity impacts students’ career and graduate school choices. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion and post-graduate success of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The specific objectives and expected outcomes are to: (1) Recruit, enroll, and provide scholarships for 30 low-income scholars with academic potential and demonstrated financial need pursuing STEM; (2) Ensure that at least 90% of project scholars are retained from first to second year; (3) Ensure that at least 80% of scholars graduate in four years and 100% graduate within five years; (4) Place in STEM graduate school or direct employment at least 80% of scholars within nine months of graduation; and (5) Incorporate research and best practices in internal and external dissemination and continue to refine the understanding of how STEM identity development among project scholars impacts their career and enrollment in graduate school. The project will contribute important knowledge about the effects of the interventions on the retention, persistence, graduation, and post-graduate outcomes of low-income, academically talented scholars, many whose underserved status intersects with additional characteristics such as first- generation in college and underrepresented minority status. The project is particularly focused on the development of STEM identity and its role in improving retention and graduation rates and post-graduation outcomes for underrepresented and underserved scholars. The evaluation will employ formative and summative assessment measures to monitor the effectiveness of activities. The management team will collect data needed for formative and summative assessment of project metrics with assistance from the project's external evaluation partner. The management team will utilize feedback from each annual evaluation to inform subsequent approaches, consistent with an action research framework. The results from the project’s external evaluation and the principal investigators’ documentation of the project’s development and impacts on scholars and the institution will be widely disseminated. In addition to traditional dissemination approaches (conference presentation and publication in peer-reviewed journals), the management team will host a virtual workshop for midwestern academic institutions similar in size and scholar populations to Doane, with the objective of widely communicating the goals and outcomes of the project and serving as a mechanism to inform the actions of institutions seeking to achieve similar results. 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 scholars 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 scholars.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.

该项目将通过支持多恩大学保留和毕业成绩优异、有经济需要的低收入学生，满足国家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。多恩学院是内布拉斯加州最古老的文理学院，成立于 1872 年。该项目以克里特岛乡村住宅本科校园（距林肯 30 英里）为中心。该项目为期六年，将为 30 名正在攻读生物学、生物化学、化学、工程学或环境与地球科学学士学位的独特全日制学生提供奖学金。一年级学生将获得长达四年的奖学金支持。多恩的招生工作将涉及与人口多元化且大量学生来自低收入家庭的地区高中合作。我们将利用和设计一系列教育和个人支持，以提高学生的学业成功、STEM 身份的发展以及对课程的坚持直至毕业。该项目将继续、加强和扩展课程作业，以加强 Doane STEM 项目之间的伙伴关系和跨学科联系；为学生提供一个活生生的学习社区；通过课外活动将学生与 STEM 专业人士联系起来；提供正式和非正式的指导；并为教师指导的本科生研究以及外部资助的 STEM 研究提供机会。为了最有效地支持学生，最多 30 名 STEM 教师将接受基于研究的本科生 STEM 指导最佳实践的培训，包括文化能力培训。该项目的更广泛影响将包括通过支持 30 个有经济需求的低收入、学术才华横溢的 STEM 专业学生，以及增加多恩多样化高素质 STEM 专业学生（包括来自农村或非常农村社区的学生）的整体产量，帮助满足当地和区域行业对 STEM 毕业生不断增长的需求。该项目的智力价值包括广泛传播强有力的项目评估结果，该评估将衡量（a）单个项目活动对学生保留和毕业的有效性和影响，以及（b）强大的 STEM 身份的发展如何影响学生的职业和研究生院选择。该项目的总体目标是提高具有经济需求的低收入、成绩优异的本科生的 STEM 学位完成率和研究生成功率。具体目标和预期成果是： (1) 招募、注册并为 30 名具有学术潜力并有经济需要追求 STEM 的低收入学者提供奖学金； （2）确保第一年至第二年保留至少90%的项目学者； （3）确保至少80%的学者四年内毕业，100%的五年内毕业； (4) 至少80%的学者在毕业后9个月内进入STEM研究生院或直接就业； (5) 将研究和最佳实践纳入内部和外部传播，并继续深化对项目学者 STEM 身份发展如何影响其职业生涯和研究生入学的理解。该项目将贡献重要知识，了解干预措施对低收入、有学术才华的学者的保留、坚持、毕业和研究生成绩的影响，这些学者中许多人的服务不足状况与大学第一代和代表性不足的少数族裔状况等其他特征相交叉。该项目特别关注 STEM 身份的发展及其在提高代表性不足和服务不足的学者的保留率和毕业率以及毕业后成果方面的作用。评价将采用形成性和终结性评估措施来监测活动的有效性。管理团队将在项目外部评估合作伙伴的协助下收集项目指标的形成性和总结性评估所需的数据。管理团队将利用每次年度评估的反馈来为后续的方法提供信息，并与行动研究框架保持一致。项目外部评估的结果以及主要研究者关于项目发展及其对学者和机构影响的记录将被广泛传播。除了传统的传播方法（会议演讲和在同行评审期刊上发表）之外，管理团队还将为规模和学者人数与多恩相似的中西部学术机构举办虚拟研讨会，目的是广泛传达项目的目标和成果，并作为一种机制，为寻求实现类似结果的机构提供行动信息。该项目由 NSF 的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，该项目旨在增加具有经济需求且获得 STEM 领域学位的低收入学术天才学者的数量。它还旨在改善未来 STEM 工作者的教育，并产生有关低收入学者的学术成功、保留、转学、毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。