Encouraging Master’s Study in Electrical and Computer Engineering through Scholarships, Undergraduate Research, and Mentoring

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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 Missouri University of Science and Technology. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to twenty-seven unique full-time low-income students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in computer or electrical engineering. Second-year undergraduate students will receive up to three years of scholarships. Any student who chooses to pursue a combined bachelor’s/master’s degree in either discipline will receive a fourth and final scholarship that will fund them for the additional year required to graduate with a master’s degree. The project envisions that ten of the projected twenty-seven scholarship recipients are expected to pursue this option. This project aims to increase persistence, success, and graduation with bachelor’s and combined bachelor’s/master’s degrees in computer and electrical engineering for talented low-income students. Financial support, faculty mentoring, undergraduate research, placement in internships, and professional development activities will be employed to this end. This project will advance knowledge of best practices for motivating and empowering low-income students to earn advanced degrees in engineering, cultivate a professional identity, and develop skills conducive to success in the work force. The ultimate outcomes are upward mobility of these students and increased competitiveness of the U.S. in the technology sector.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high- achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. Existing research has demonstrated that students who identify with and see themselves as capable of success in their field of study are more likely to pursue a graduate degree. This project will investigate the effectiveness of mentoring and other project activities and scholarships in fostering this self-perception and enabling low-income undergraduates to begin a professional career on graduation, or to continue on to earn a master’s degree. The success of the project will be evaluated using both subjective student self-assessments and objective measures that include course grades, graduation rates, and rates of employment or placement in graduate school after completion of the undergraduate degree. Project results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journal articles and presentations at academic conferences. 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.