FIRSTS (Foundation for Increasing and Retaining STEM Students) Program: A bridge program to study the sociological development of science identities

FIRSTS（增加和留住STEM学生基金会）是一个扩展的夏桥计划，为即将入学的学生，通过他们在大学的第一个学期继续。 该计划的总体目标是帮助来自服务不足人群的学生过渡到STEM课程的严格要求，并收集有关经济困难学生选择离开STEM学科的原因的定性和定量数据。 而不是简单地填补内容空白，FIRSTS将使用学习技能的补救在跨学科的暑期课程，广泛的指导，并发展科学身份，以提高在干学科的成功。 除了以学生为中心的战略，该计划还将通过参与，培训，跨学科互动和讨论，将教师发展纳入教学方法和指导的改进。 FIRSTS将利用现有的大学资助的计划，重点是来自历史贫困地区的代表性不足的少数民族学生，并将仔细试点扩大，以包括具有类似轮廓的科学学生的学校。 该计划将为处于风险中的学生部署最佳实践，同时将研究重点放在与社会经济地位，交叉科学和其他身份的影响有关的未充分研究的问题上。 因此，FIRSTS将代表科学学院与人文社会科学学院在教学和研究方面的独特数据驱动合作。如果成功，该项目的数据将允许其他部门，学院和大学将发展理念纳入其现有的STEM保留战略。

FIRSTS (Foundation for Increasing and Retaining STEM Students) is an extended summer bridge program for incoming students that continues through their first semester at college. The overall goals of this program are to help students from underserved populations transition to the rigors of the STEM curriculum and gather both qualitative and quantitative data on the reasons financially needy students elect to leave STEM disciplines. Rather than simply filling content gaps, FIRSTS will use the remediation of study skills in a interdisciplinary summer course, extensive mentoring, and the development of a science identity to improve success in STEM disciplines. In addition to student-focused strategies, the program also will incorporate faculty development in the improvement of teaching methods and mentoring through participation, training, interdisciplinary interactions, and discussions. FIRSTS will leverage the existing college-funded programming that is focused on predominantly underrepresented minority students from regions of historic poverty and will carefully pilot an expansion to include School of Science students with similar profiles. This program will deploy best practices for at-risk students, while focusing the research on understudied questions related to the impact of socioeconomic status, intersecting science and other identities. As such, FIRSTS will represent the unique data-driven collaboration between the School of Science and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences on pedagogy and research. If successful, the data from this project will allow other departments, colleges, and universities to incorporate a developmental philosophy in their existing STEM retention strategies.