DCL: HSI Transfer and the Undergraduate STEM Pipeline at Two-year Hispanic Serving Institutions

美国国家科学基金会使用探索性研究的早期概念拨款（EAGER）资助机制来支持在未经测试但具有潜在变革性的研究思路或方法的早期阶段的探索性工作。为响应NSF 15-078“两年制西班牙裔服务机构本科STEM教育有效策略的激励性研究”，伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校将对两年制西班牙裔服务机构（HSIs）对拉丁裔学生在STEM中的坚持和成功的影响进行探索性研究。本研究将分两个阶段进行，采用优势-非优势混合方法研究设计。在第一阶段，即研究的定量阶段，将结合两个国家数据集，然后对其进行挖掘，以确定两年制hsi西班牙裔学生的STEM转学途径。基于第一阶段的结果，第二阶段，即研究的定性阶段，将涉及五个hsi的案例研究，以便更深入地探讨为西班牙裔服务的社区学院的实践，这些实践促进了拉丁裔学生在STEM项目中的成功入学、毕业和转学。该研究的结果将通过增加对哪些STEM专业和哪些两年制hsi有最多的西班牙裔学生转学和完成四年制STEM学位的了解，为知识库做出贡献。所采用的方法是新颖的，并且可能产生使用数据挖掘技术探索其他类型机构数据的新方法。研究结果可以为两年制hsi（和其他社区学院）提供信息，让他们了解可以实施哪些策略，以促进拉丁裔学生成功走上STEM道路。

The National Science Foundation uses the EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) funding mechanism to support exploratory work in its early stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches. In response to the Dear Colleague Letter NSF 15-078, "Stimulating Research on Effective Strategies in Undergraduate STEM Education at Two-Year Hispanic Serving Institutions", the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will conduct an exploratory research study on the impact of two-year Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) on the persistence and success of Latino(a) students in STEM. The study will be conducted in two phases using a dominant-less dominant mixed methods research design. In Phase 1, the quantitative phase of the study, two national data sets will be coupled and then mined to determine the STEM transfer pathways for Hispanic students at two-year HSIs. Based on the results of Phase 1, Phase 2, the qualitative phase of the study, will involve case studies of five HSIs to enable a deeper dive to probe in detail the practices of Hispanic-serving community colleges that facilitate the successful matriculation, graduation, and transfer of Latino(a) students in STEM programs. The results of the research study will contribute to the knowledge base by increasing understanding about which STEM majors and which two-year HSIs have the greatest production of Hispanic student transfers and completers of four-year STEM degrees. The methodology employed is novel and may yield new methods for using data mining techniques to explore data for other types of institutions. The outcomes could inform two-year HSIs (and other community colleges) about those strategies they could implement to facilitate successful STEM pathways for Latino(a) students.