Engaging Community Colleges Students through a Residential, Pre-transfer Summer Research Program

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With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to develop a collaboration between Sonoma State University (SSU), a four-year primarily undergraduate institution, and two community colleges, Mendocino College and Santa Rosa Junior College, to engage community college students in research experiences at SSU prior to applying for transfer. Transfer students can face a number of challenges as they move to 4-year institutions, which can hinder success in STEM disciplines. The project will bring two cohorts of ten community college students each year for a five-week residential research experience. Participants will also take part in professional and social activities to build a strong cohort and promote students’ sense of belonging. Existing connections between the Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Achievement (MESA) programs at all three institutions will allow the project to recruit diverse participants, including first generation students and students from populations that have been historically underrepresented in STEM.Community colleges generally serve more diverse populations than 4-year institutions, yet at many institutions nationwide, students from minority populations often transfer at lower rates than their peers. Undergraduate research is a high-impact practice that has been shown to provide a rich, engaging experience for students that can drive greater equity in student retention and overall success. This project will generate new knowledge by exploring how a 5-week, pre-transfer research experience that includes cohort building activities impacts the sense of belonging and STEM self-efficacy of community college students. The project will also collect data on how the project model contributes to students’ later decision to transfer and pursue a 4-year degree. The core project model will be disseminated to communities of interest as an example of how 2- and 4-year institutions can collaborate to increase student engagement and persistence in STEM. Project evaluation will use student and faculty data to assess the effectiveness and implementation of project components while examining the scalability of the project model with an eye towards future expansion. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity, more generally, at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also draw from these approaches to 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.