Scholarships and Supports to Increase Access to and Completion of Masters Degrees in Engineering

该项目将通过支持表现出经济需要的成绩优异的低收入家庭学生的保留和毕业，满足国家对受过良好教育的科学家、数学家、工程师和技术人员的需求。该项目为期五年，将为36名在博伊西州立大学工程学院攻读硕士学位的学生提供为期两年的奖学金。这些学位包括土木、机械、电气与计算机工程和材料科学与工程。工程学院有很多有经济需要的学生，他们是第一代和/或来自农村背景。尽管这些学生很感兴趣，但他们并没有进入研究生课程，这些课程授予该地区行业高需求的学位。此外，有证据表明，在研究生阶段，这些学生群体面临的障碍比他们在本科阶段面临的障碍更加复杂，更具挑战性。通过招募这些本科生进入研究生课程，通过奖学金提供经济支持，并建立学术、文化和劳动力准备支持，该项目具有很大的潜力，可以扩大STEM研究生课程和工作场所的参与。如果成功，该项目将吸引大批有才华的工程师，为国家的创新引擎做出贡献，这些工程师由于经济原因而低估了他们作为研究生的潜力。该项目的总体目标是提高有经济需求的低收入、成绩优异的研究生的STEM学位完成率。该项目旨在通过将奖学金与有效的辅助性课程/课外活动和高影响力干预策略（包括学术指导、文化/家庭活动、社区建设社会项目、技能培训和劳动力准备支持，包括实习和创业发展）联系起来，提高学生对学位的坚持度。研究表明，研究生面临着复杂的非认知因素，这些因素给坚持带来了额外的障碍。另一个障碍是，许多研究生很难跟上高节奏和高强度的研究生学习，同时还要平衡家庭责任。该项目旨在帮助填补关于对本科STEM学生产生积极影响的研究验证干预措施的实施是否以及如何影响研究生STEM学生成功的巨大知识空白。项目研究活动将以社会科学传统为基础，以研究项目干预措施的设计和实施为目标。通过使用结果指标、调查、个人访谈和焦点小组，该项目将收集有关不同干预措施在减少障碍和提高学生成功方面的有效性的数据。研究结果将在同行评议的STEM和普通教育期刊上发表，并在会议上发表。该项目由美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金（STEM）计划资助，该计划旨在增加有经济需求的低收入学术天才学生在STEM领域获得学位的人数。它还旨在改善未来STEM工作者的教育，并为低收入学生提供有关学业成功、留校、转学、毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。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。

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need. Over its five-year duration, this project will fund two-year scholarships to 36 students pursuing master's degrees in Boise State University's College of Engineering. These degrees include Civil, Mechanical, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering. The College of Engineering has a high population of students with financial need who are first-generation and/or from rural backgrounds. Despite their interest, these students have not entered the graduate programs that award degrees in high demand by the region's industries. In addition, there is evidence that, at the graduate level, these student populations face a compounded, more challenging version of the barriers that they faced as undergraduates. By recruiting these undergraduates into graduate programs, providing financial support through scholarships, and building academic, cultural, and workforce readiness supports, this project has a high potential to broaden participation in STEM graduate programs and workplaces. If successful, the project will contribute to the Nation's innovation engine by tapping into a population of talented engineers who discount their potential as graduate students due to financially-motivated concerns. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving graduate students with demonstrated financial need. The project aims to increase student persistence to degree by linking scholarships with effective supporting curricular/co-curricular activities and high-impact intervention strategies, including academic mentoring, cultural/family events, community-building social programs, skills training, and workforce readiness support, including internships and entrepreneurship development. Research has shown that graduate students face compounded noncognitive factors that impose additional barriers to persistence. An additional barrier is that many graduate students have difficulty keeping up with the high pace and intensity of graduate studies, while balancing family responsibilities. This project aims to help fill the large knowledge gap about whether and how implementation of research-validated interventions that have positive impact on undergraduate STEM students affect graduate STEM student success. The project research activities will be grounded in the social science tradition with the goal of studying the project interventions' design and implementation. Using outcome metrics, surveys, individual interviews, and focus groups, the project will gather data about the effectiveness of different interventions in reducing barriers and improving student success. Results will be disseminated through publication in peer-reviewed STEM and general educational journals as well as presentations at conferences. This project is funded by NSF's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) 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.