Building a Chemistry and Biochemistry Targeted Learning Community: The Impact of Vertical Mentoring on STEM Student Outcomes

该项目将通过支持加州州立大学圣马科斯分校高成就、低收入、有经济需求的学生的留校和毕业，为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做出贡献。这所大学是一所为西班牙裔服务的机构，主要服务于通勤的学生群体。在为期五年的时间里，该项目将为三组20名独特的全日制学生提供最多四年的奖学金。奖学金获得者将被嵌入一个由30名学生组成的化学和生物化学目标学习社区。该项目旨在通过将奖学金与有效的支持活动联系起来，提高学生在STEM领域的坚持性，这些活动包括课程工作的队列模型；同行、研究生、教员和专业指导；以及学术和专业研讨会。一些学习社区参与者将在随后的学习社区队列中成为同伴导师，以支持创建一个可持续的辅导社区。考虑到该大学的拉美裔服务地位，该项目有可能扩大STEM领域的参与。它还可以帮助人们对特定学科的学习社区的影响做出新的理解，该社区具有多层次的垂直指导经验和共同课程支持，对学生提升STEM相关职业和/或研究生课程的影响。该项目的总体目标是增加低收入、高成就、有经济需求的本科生完成STEM学位。一个稳健的项目评估将使用比较小组的方法来探索奖学金相对于模型其他方面的相对重要性。非认知因素，如社区意识，也被证明影响STEM学生的坚持性。然而，对于这些因素如何影响西班牙裔服务机构的化学和生化学生，人们知之甚少。一项混合方法的研究将调查学生社区感以及项目活动对部门和机构变化的影响。该项目有可能促进对学生群体如何发展以及它与STEM职业中的保留率和研究生竞争力之间的关系的理解。将通过调查、重点小组和机构记录收集形成性和总结性评价数据。该项目的成果将通过同行评议的出版物、会议报告和与其他四年制校园的外联活动提供。该项目由NSF的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，该项目旨在增加在STEM领域获得学位的低收入学术天才学生的数量。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业成功、留住、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优势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 at California State University San Marcos. This university is a Hispanic-serving Institution that serves a primarily commuter student population. Over its five-year duration, this project will fund scholarships of up to four years to 20 unique full-time students, in three cohorts. Scholarship recipients will be embedded in a 30-student Chemistry and Biochemistry Targeted Learning Community. The project aims to increase student persistence in STEM fields by linking scholarships with effective support activities that include a cohort model for coursework; peer, graduate student, faculty, and professional mentoring; and academic and professional workshops. Some learning community participants will become peer mentors in subsequent learning community cohorts to support the creation of a sustainable mentoring community. Given the university’s Hispanic-serving status, this project has the potential to broaden participation in STEM fields. It can also contribute new understanding about the impacts of a discipline-specific learning community with a multi-level vertical mentoring experience and co-curricular support on students’ advancement to STEM-related careers and/or graduate programs.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. A robust project evaluation will use a comparison group approach to probe the relative importance of the scholarship relative to other aspects of the model. Non-cognitive factors, such as sense of community, have also been demonstrated to affect STEM student persistence. However, little is known about how these factors affect chemistry and biochemistry students at a Hispanic-serving Institution with a commuter population. A mixed-methods study will investigate the sense of student community and the effect of project activities on departmental and institutional change. The project has the potential to advance understanding about how student community develops and how it relates to retention rates and post-graduate competitiveness in STEM careers. Formative and summative evaluation data will be collected through surveys, focus groups, and institutional records. Results of this project will be made available through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and outreach to other four-year campuses. 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.