Sophomore Fellows: Cultivating New Scientists through Research, Mentoring, and Community

在美国国家科学基金会科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金（S-STEM）项目的资助下，大二研究员项目将支持德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校表现出经济需求的高成就低收入学生。在五年的资助期内，该项目将为攻读天文学、生物学、生物化学、化学、计算机科学和物理学学士学位的大二学生提供125个年度奖学金，最高可达5,000美元。大二研究员项目将让这些学者参与位于本科生、研究生和教师导师社区的研究项目。大二研究员项目的目标是提高低收入学生的坚持和毕业率，包括那些来自STEM中代表性不足的群体的学生，同时更好地为研究生院和科学事业做好准备。该项目将调查将财政援助与课程内研究、教师指导和同伴指导活动相结合的效果，以提高学生的学术成长和持久性。大学二年级学生利用奥斯汀大学自然科学学院的新生研究计划（FRI）。FRI是一个以社区为基础的课程整合项目，吸引本科生参与研究。大二研究员项目将使用现有的FRI项目结构，该结构已被证明可以提高STEM的毕业率，并将增加经济激励，以鼓励学生在第一年和第二年之间最常见的损流点坚持下去。大二的研究员将在FRI研究流中学习课程。一个研究小组，包括教师，研究生和其他本科生，将形成这个研究经验的结构。这段经历将帮助学生培养团队合作、研究、写作和口头交流等技能。在他们的第二个学期，大二的研究员将作为FRI新生的同伴导师，将这些奖学金的影响扩大到几十个学生。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With funding from the NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program, the Sophomore Fellows project will support high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at the University of Texas at Austin. Throughout its five years of funding, this project will fund 125 annual scholarships of up to $5,000 for sophomore students who are pursuing bachelor's degrees in Astronomy, Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Computer Sciences, and Physics. The Sophomore Fellows project will engage these Scholars in research projects that are situated in a community of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty mentors. The goal of the Sophomore Fellows project is to increase persistence and graduation rates of low-income students, including those from groups that are underrepresented in STEM, while better preparing students for graduate school and scientific careers. This project will investigate the efficacy of coupling financial aid with intra-curricular research, faculty mentorship, and peer mentoring activities to improve student academic growth and persistence. Sophomore Fellows leverages the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) in the College of Natural Sciences at UT Austin. FRI is a community-based curriculum-integrated program that engages undergraduate students in research. The Sophomore Fellows project will use the existing FRI program structure, which has been demonstrated to increase graduation rates in STEM, and will add a financial incentive to encourage students to persist at the most common attrition point between their first and second years. Sophomore Fellows will take courses in an FRI research stream. A research group that includes faculty, graduate students, and other undergraduates, will form the structure for this research experience. It is expected that this experience will help students develop skills including teamwork, research, writing, and oral communication. In their second semester, Sophomore Fellows will serve as peer mentors for incoming FRI students, amplifying the impact of these scholarships to dozens of students for every award given.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.