Attracting and Retaining Promising Transfer Students into STEM Fields

学院向转校生开放的努力，正值越来越复杂的方法被开发出来，以建立科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域之间的联系。该项目作为这些发展的催化剂，为多达20名转校生提供了获得学士学位的途径。该项目的动机是为了更好地吸引和留住STEM领域的科学人才。此外，一个研究计算科学、人工智能和生物科学问题的核心教师团队，有兴趣在那些可能已经受到工作和生活经历激励而在STEM领域脱颖而出的学生周围建立结构和文化凝聚力。智力优势：虽然该学院在吸引STEM领域代表性不足的学生方面做得很好，但代表性不足群体的总体流失率有些高。学院已经开始采取深思熟虑和谨慎的措施来解决这些流失率。这个项目使学院能够提供更强大的经济援助计划，以帮助吸引和留住转学生。这些转学生提供了多样化，这加强了学院的整体人口构成，并在课堂上提供了更多样化的视角。更广泛的影响：学院以探究为导向的跨学科科学教学方法在吸引来自不同背景的学生进入STEM领域方面取得了成功。根据最近的招生数据，这所大学毕业的理科学生（15%）比最初吸引的理科学生（10%）要多。此外，从2005年到2008年，女性和来自代表性不足群体的学生占科学专业学生的70%。这些学生中的许多人进入了一系列的科学和医学职业，或者在入学后继续研究生学习。该项目允许教师与更多的学生一起工作，并有望产生更多有才华的毕业生，为国家和国际科学挑战做出有意义的贡献。

The effort of the college to open access to transfer students comes at a time when increasingly sophisticated methodological methods are being developed to forge connections across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This project acts as a catalyst for these developments and offers up to 20 transfer students a pathway to achieve bachelor degrees. This project is motivated by the institutional objective to better attract and retain science concentrators in STEM fields. Additionally, a core team of faculty, whose work investigates questions in computational science, artificial intelligence, and the biological sciences, are interested in building structural and cultural cohesion around concentrators who may already be motivated by work and life experiences to excel in STEM fields. Intellectual Merit: While the college has done well attracting underrepresented students in STEM fields, the overall attrition rate for underrepresented groups is somewhat high. The college has begun to take deliberate and careful measures to address these attrition rates. This project allows the college to offer a more robust financial aid package to help to attract and retain transfer students. These transfer students provide diversification, which strengthens the overall demographic makeup of the college and offers a more diverse range of perspectives in the classroom.Broader Impact: The inquiry-driven, cross-disciplinary approach to teaching science at the college has demonstrated success in attracting students from diverse backgrounds to STEM fields. According to recent admissions data, the college graduates more science concentrators (15%) than it initially attracts (10%). Moreover, from 2005-08, women and students from underrepresented groups comprised 70% of science concentrators. Many of these students enter a range of scientific and medical careers, or pursue graduate study upon matriculating. This project allows faculty to work with a greater number of students and is expected to result in higher numbers of talented graduates prepared to make meaningful contributions to national and international scientific challenges.