HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Building a Problem-Solving Community of Scholars in STEM

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With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 2: IEP aims to improve student success, retention, and degree persistence among underrepresented Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors at the University of Houston. While transitioning from high school to college remains a challenge for students in STEM, many institutions provide various programming for improving first-year retention rates, including undergraduate research, active learning in the classroom, living and learning communities, summer bridge programming, and peer-led learning. However, sophomore year retention has become a great concern for persistence since this is when STEM students typically enroll in key “gateway” courses, and targeted programming for achieving success in these courses is often times not available. For groups, who are underrepresented in STEM majors and careers, this may be more challenging as they also work to establish a sense of community and belonging in their major departments. The University of Houston (UH) is a designated Hispanic and Asian, Native American and Pacific Islander Serving institution and is ranked in the top ten by US News and World Report for student ethnic diversity. This program at UH will provide support for STEM majors beyond their freshmen year and foster a community of learners to promote persistence to degree completion. The overarching goal of this project is to improve STEM student retention by implementing evidence-based interventions and best practices to enhance students’ content knowledge, develop their sense of belonging, and strengthen their STEM identity to promote success beyond the freshman year. This will be accomplished through a 5-week Problem-Solving Community of Scholars bridge program (between freshmen and sophomore year) that exposes students to sophomore-level “gateway” course content, a problem-solving workshop for skills and community building, and support via the Guaranteed 4.0 Learning System which will provide tailored guidance and feedback on the process of learning for STEM student success. The results of this project will provide knowledge on how support programming can be implemented, scaled, and sustained for promoting underrepresented minority student success in STEM. It will also contribute to the Community Cultural Wealth research literature by uncovering knowledge related to factors that may inhibit and contribute to the success of underrepresented STEM students in a HSI context. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.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.