Building Capacity: City College of New York STEM Communities

改善本科STEM教育：西班牙裔服务机构计划（HSI计划）旨在加强本科STEM教育并建立HSI的能力。HSI计划支持的项目也将产生关于如何实现这些目标的新知识。纽约大学城市大学（CUNY City College）的这个项目将通过建立一个专门为进入、继续或转到STEM专业的学生设计的社交媒体平台来推进HSI计划的目标。从高中到大学，从两年制大学到四年制大学，或者从低年级到高年级的学生都面临着学术和后勤方面的挑战。这些挑战包括适应新环境，学习注册机制和其他校园活动，以及应对课程严格性和节奏的变化。在城市院校，这些挑战可能会被放大，在那里，通勤和课外工作带来了额外的障碍。为了应对这些挑战，纽约市立大学计划为进入、继续或转到STEM专业的学生建立一个社交媒体平台。该平台将被设计为提供学术支持、辅导和社交互动的“一站式”场所。该平台还被设想为促进由于通勤或工作需要而在校时间有限的学生的网络和互动。该平台还将成为虚拟辅导的家园，并将列出资源和联系信息（例如经济援助），以帮助学生找到他们在校园需要的东西。预计该平台将提高学生在STEM领域的成功率和保留率，从而有助于增加STEM领域的多样性。支持社区建设和信息共享干预措施的社交媒体平台可以通过改善城市通勤学校学生获得关键服务的机会，帮助处于关键转型阶段的学生。成功地解决文化冲击有望提高这些学生的留校率和毕业率。这一假设将通过创建纽约市立大学STEM社区平台来探索：这是一个定制的、开源的社交网络平台，旨在增强和扩展纽约市立大学为新生、转学生和从低年级到高年级课程过渡的学生提供的外展和支持服务。城市大学STEM社区也有望吸引这些学生参与社会和信息互动，从而减轻文化冲击的影响，从而提高留校率和毕业率。纽约市立大学城市学院STEM社区有四个目标：1)探索定制的社交媒体平台在多大程度上可以建立和扩展学生与同龄人、导师和学生组织在多个层面上的参与机会，以减轻文化冲击；2)通过动员以体验式学习、研究、创业、学生俱乐部和门户课程为重点的“亲和团体”，探索该平台在多大程度上也能提高学生的教育成就和劳动力准备，这些课程由近同伴课程连接器支持，在灵活的时间内得到学术支持，并得到助教和教师的支持；3)通过网络社会归属干预提高队列成员的自我效能感和内在控制点；4)撰写关于校园文化冲击的产生和影响因素的文献，特别是在城市通勤学院，以及通过使用社交媒体缓解校园文化冲击。本研究的结果将确定导致未被充分代表的STEM学生过渡中的文化冲击的因素，并将探索社交媒体缓解文化冲击的有效性。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。

The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (HSI Program) aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims. This project at the City University of University of New York (CUNY City College) will advance the aims of the HSI Program by building a social media platform designed specifically for students entering, continuing, or transferring into STEM majors. Students transitioning from high school to college, from two-year institutions to four-year institutions, or from lower division to upper division coursework face academic and logistical challenges. These challenges include navigating a new environment, learning the mechanics of registration and other campus activities, and dealing with changes in rigor and pacing in coursework. These challenges can be amplified at urban institutions, where commuting and working outside the classroom present added obstacles. CUNY City College plans to address these challenges by building a social media platform for students entering, continuing, or transferring into STEM majors. The platform will be designed as a "one-stop" location for academic support, tutoring, and social interaction. The platform is envisioned to also promote networking and interaction for students with limited time on campus due to commuting or work needs. The platform will also be a home for virtual tutoring and will list resources and contact information (e.g. financial aid) to connect students with what they need on campus. It is expected that this platform will improve student success and retention in STEM, thus contributing to increasing diversity in STEM fields. A social media platform that supports community-building and information sharing interventions may assist students at critical transitions by improving access to critical services for students who attend urban commuter schools. Successfully addressing culture shock is expected to result in higher retention and graduation rates for these students. This hypothesis will be explored by creating the CUNY City College STEM Communities platform: a custom-built, open-source, social networking platform intended to augment and extend the outreach and support services that CUNY City College offers to incoming students, transfer students, and students transitioning from lower division to upper division coursework. CUNY City College STEM Communities is also expected to draw these students into social and informational interactions that will mitigate the effects of culture shock, resulting in increased retention and graduation rates. CUNY City College STEM Communities has four objectives: 1) to explore the degree to which a custom-constructed social media platform can build and extend student engagement opportunities at multiple levels with peers, mentors, and student organizations to mitigate culture shock; 2) to explore the degree to which that platform can also improve student educational achievement and workforce preparation through the mobilization of "affinity groups" focused on experiential learning, research, entrepreneurship, student clubs, and gateway classes that are supported by near-peer Course Connectors, enhanced by academic support during flexible hours, and buttressed by teaching assistants and faculty; 3) to increase cohort members' self-efficacy and internal locus of control through an online social belonging intervention; and 4) to contribute to the literature on factors producing and affecting campus culture shock, particularly at urban commuter colleges, and its mitigation through the use of social media. The results of this research will identify factors that contribute to the cultural shock in transitioning underrepresented STEM students and will explore the effectiveness of social media to mitigate it.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.