STEM MILES: Mentoring Innovative Learning Experiences for Students

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，STEM MILES（科学、技术、工程和数学指导学生创新学习体验）项目正在为低收入家庭的学生提供支持，这些学生有经济需求，并有学术希望，能在圣罗莎初级学院的STEM学科中取得成功。这项努力旨在通过扩大社区学院教师在建议和指导方面的作用，同时将这一作用与经济支持相结合，来改善低收入、有学术天赋的STEM学生的学业成果。社区学院将为学生提供高接触、专注的教师指导模式，这种模式通常在规模较小的私立四年制高等教育机构中发现。60名低收入家庭学生，主修生物科学、化学、物理、工程或数学，将在资助期限内分成三组，每组20名学生。由圣罗莎初级学院的STEM教师组成的跨学科团队领导，STEM MILES项目将提供干预措施，培养学生的科学自我效能感、身份、动机和价值观，这些都有助于成功转入四年制大学或完成STEM领域的学位。为了加强他们对科学界的归属感，并鼓励他们在STEM学术道路上坚持不懈，MILES的学者将参加科学批判性思维的跨学科课程，并参加课外教师指导。为了加强STEM社区内的师生合作，学者们将通过网络、实地考察、工作见习活动、招聘会和实习机会参与职业探索机会。为了培养科学的自我认同和自我效能感，学生们将从每学期的专业发展机会菜单中进行选择，以获得研究经验，并建立领导能力和工作技能。该项目的评估和评估将为传统STEM教学向专业教学的转变过程提供信息。形成性评估将通过期末检查表和调查来跟踪学者在整个项目中的经历。总结性评估将通过问卷调查来完成，比较项目开始和结束时的学生，并根据基线队列对学生表现数据进行统计分析。传统弱势群体在STEM领域的表现不佳是一个有充分记录的现象，该项目有望提供一个模型来抵消这种表现不佳。MILES项目增加了课程组成部分，一个全面的教师建议系统，并鼓励STEM部门跟踪与STEM相关学生途径的进展和完成相关的数据。形成性和总结性评估的结果将引起越来越多的社区学院的兴趣，这些学院正在重新设计他们的学术课程，以提供连贯的途径，从而提高学生的毕业和转学水平。

With funding from the National Science Foundation's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program, the STEM MILES (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Mentoring Innovative Learning Experiences for Students) project is providing support to low-income students with demonstrated financial need and academic promise to succeed in STEM disciplines at Santa Rosa Junior College. This effort aims to improve the academic outcomes of low-income, academically talented STEM students by expanding the role that community college faculty play in advising and mentoring while pairing that role with financial support. Community college students will be provided with the high-touch, focused-faculty advising model, typically found at smaller private four-year institutions of higher education. Sixty low-income students majoring in Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, or Mathematics will be recruited, in three cohorts of twenty students over the grant life span. Led by an interdisciplinary team of STEM faculty at Santa Rosa Junior College, the STEM MILES project will provide interventions that develop students' scientific self-efficacy, identity, motivation, and values that are known to promote successful transfer to four-year institutions or completion of degrees in the STEM fields. To reinforce their sense of belonging to the scientific community and encourage their perseverance in STEM academic pathways, the MILES scholars will enroll in an interdisciplinary course on Critical Thinking in the Sciences and participate in co-curricular faculty mentoring. To enhance faculty-student collaborations within the STEM community, the scholars will participate in career exploration opportunities through networking, field trips, job shadowing events, career fairs, and internship opportunities. To foster scientific self-identity and self-efficacy, the students will select from a menu of professional development opportunities every semester, in order to gain experience with research, as well as build leadership and job skills. The evaluation and assessment of this project will inform the transformative process from traditional STEM instruction to specialized instruction. Formative assessment will track the experience of the scholars through the Program via end-of-semester checklists and surveys. The summative assessment will be done via questionnaires comparing students at the beginning versus the end of the program and the statistical analysis of student performance data against a baseline cohort. The underperformance of traditionally disadvantaged groups in the STEM fields is a well-documented phenomenon, and this project holds promise for providing a model that counteracts that underperformance. The MILES Program adds curricular components, a comprehensive system of faculty advising, and encourages the STEM departments to track data related to the progress and completion of STEM-related student pathways. The results of formative and summative assessments will be of interest to the increasing number of community colleges that are redesigning their academic programs to provide coherent pathways leading to improved student graduation and transfer.