Project SOAR: Scholarships, Opportunities, Achievements, and Results

Soar计划正在从生物科学系、化学系、物理和地质系、数学和统计学系或计算机科学系招收、留住和毕业有学术天赋的学生。正在组织四个学生队列，从一年级的17名学者开始，在15名学者的持续支持下，从大二到大四。该项目的多学科性质是支持参与学科的教师之间的合作。SOAR学者通过各种方式得到支持，以确保他们的学术成功；这些服务包括增强的教师指导、为期一年的新生研讨会、STEM学习社区、STEM生活社区、同行辅导和同行辅导。Soar为学生提供了强大的本科生研究机会、实习机会和合作项目，该项目由内部和外部咨询委员会提供信息。Soar项目是围绕提高低收入第一代学生的留校率和毕业率的有效实践而设计的。该项目正在增加STEM中任职人数不足的群体成员的参与，并正在增加STEM毕业生的人数，这将有助于缓解该区域的需求。该项目正在通过多种评估和评价模式产生数据，这些模式将为招聘做法、第一年课程的设计、使用特定学科的学习社区和学术支助服务方面的机构变化提供信息。

Project SOAR is recruiting, retaining, and graduating academically talented students as majors from the departments of biological sciences, chemistry, physics and geology, mathematics and statistics, or computer science. Four cohorts of students are being organized, beginning with 17 scholars in the freshman year and with continuing support of 15 scholars for the cohorts from their sophomore through senior years. The multi-disciplinary nature of the project is supporting collaborations between faculty in the participating disciplines.SOAR scholars are being supported in a variety of ways to ensure their academic success; these services include enhanced faculty mentoring, year-long freshman seminar, STEM learning communities, a STEM living community, peer tutoring, and peer mentoring. SOAR students are being offered strong undergraduate research opportunities, internships, and co-ops and the project is being informed by both internal and external advisory boards.The SOAR project is coherently designed around effective practices for increasing retention and graduation rates for low-income, first-generation students. The project is increasing the participation of members of groups underrepresented in STEM and is increasing the number of STEM graduates that will contribute to alleviating the region's needs. The project is producing data via multiple modes of assessment and evaluation that will inform institutional changes in recruiting practices, design of first-year courses, use of discipline-specific learning communities, and academic support services.