Academic Support, Career Training, and Professional Development to Improve Interdisciplinary Graduate Education for the Next Generation of Computational Scientists and Engineers

该项目将有助于对受过良好教育的科学家，数学家和工程师的国家需要通过支持招聘，保留和高成就，低收入的学生在圣地亚哥州立大学（SDSU），一个为期四年的西班牙裔服务机构证明经济需要毕业。在其5年的时间里，该项目将提供两年的奖学金支持（$10，000/年），以30名研究生谁正在攻读学位计算科学，工程科学（土木，机械，航空航天，结构，电气和生物），计算机科学，数学，物理，化学，地质学和生物学。该项目还将改进课程，旨在改善学生的发展和参与跨学科研究团队。特别是，主要研究人员将利用SDSU计算科学研究中心的教育计划和研究基础设施，探索学生如何发展专业知识，并建立他们作为跨学科科学家的身份。拟议的项目将产生新的知识，以促进了解如何有效地培训和支持研究生，以促进跨学科技能，经验和身份的发展，同时帮助学生克服共同的障碍。该项目的基石是建立一个计算科学与工程研究生群体，并创建一个实践社区，以探索，理解和克服早期职业科学家进入跨学科研究所面临的挑战。STEM教育研究已经证明了帮助学生发展学科特定技能和科学身份的策略的有效性。然而，鲜为人知的是如何最佳地促进跨学科计算科学家的职业生涯和身份发展。通过指导，专业发展研讨会和早期职业探索活动，学者们将与来自工业界，学术界和国家研究实验室邀请的知名跨学科研究人员进行互动，了解跨学科研究中当前和新兴的机遇和挑战。在导师的帮助下，学者们将创建个人发展计划，概述他们作为跨学科科学家/工程师的职业目标，以及实现这些目标的步骤和时间表。由此产生的实践社区将使该项目能够调查计算科学家如何发展跨学科科学家的身份，并设计工具和指标来评估学生的形成发展。该项目还将促进对障碍的理解，并为不同学生的职业道路的发展提供支持。此外，它将使如何辅导和个人发展计划支持保留和学位的实现探索。将利用培训评估、参与者报告和机构数据提供的信息，采用成果绘图和发展评价方法对该项目进行评价。该项目的结果将通过会议论文/演讲、研讨会、网络研讨会和同行评审期刊上的论文提供。该项目计划通过传播研究结果，使教育研究人员更广泛地参与关于为未来的劳动力队伍培训跨学科科学家和工程师的讨论。该项目由NSF的科学，技术，工程和数学奖学金计划资助，该计划旨在增加低收入学术人才的数量，这些学生表现出经济需求，并获得STEM领域的学位。它还旨在改善未来STEM工作者的教育，并产生关于低收入学生的学术成功，保留，转移，毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by supporting the recruitment, retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at San Diego State University (SDSU), a four-year Hispanic-serving institution. Over its 5-year duration, this project will provide two years of scholarship support ($10,000/year) to 30 graduate students who are pursing degrees in Computational Science, Engineering Sciences (Civil, Mechanical, Aerospace, Structural, Electrical and Biological), Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Geology and Biology. The project will also enable curricular improvements aimed at improving student development and engagement in interdisciplinary research teams. In particular, the principal investigators will use the educational programs and research infrastructure of the SDSU Computational Science Research Center to explore how students develop expertise and establish their identities as interdisciplinary scientists. The proposed project will generate new knowledge to advance the understanding of how to effectively train and support graduate students to facilitate development of interdisciplinary skills, experience, and identities while helping students overcome common barriers. The cornerstone of the project is to establish a cohort of graduate students in computational science and engineering and create a community of practice to explore, understand, and overcome the challenges faced by early career scientists entering interdisciplinary research. STEM education research has demonstrated the effectiveness of strategies to help students develop discipline-specific skills and science identities. However, less is known about how to optimally facilitate the career and identity development of interdisciplinary computational scientists. Through mentoring, professional development seminars, and activities for early career exploration, scholars will interact with renowned interdisciplinary researchers invited from industry, academia, and national research labs to learn about the current and emerging opportunities and challenges in interdisciplinary research. With the help of mentors, the scholars will create Individual Development Plans outlining their career goals for advancing as interdisciplinary scientists/engineers and steps and timelines toward achieving those goals. The resulting community of practice will enable the project to investigate how computational scientists develop identities as interdisciplinary scientists, and to devise tools and metrics to assess students during their formative development. The project will also advance the understanding of barriers and supports for the development of diverse students' career paths. Moreover, it will enable exploration of how mentoring and individual development plans support retention and degree attainment. The project will be evaluated by employing outcome mapping and developmental evaluation approaches using information from training assessments, participant reports, and institutional data. Results of the project will be made available by conference papers/presentation, workshops, webinars, and papers in peer-reviewed journals. Through dissemination of findings, the project plans to increase broader participation of education researchers in discussions on training interdisciplinary scientists and engineers for the future workforce. This project is funded by NSF's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.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.