Supporting Inclusive Excellence II: Scholarships to Support Undergraduate Student Success in Neuroscience and Biology-Biochemistry-Molecular Biology Majors

该项目将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，方法是支持乌尔辛斯学院--一所小型文理学院--留住并毕业有经济需求的高成就、低收入学生。在为期五年的时间里，该项目将为20名正在攻读神经科学或生物学、生物化学和分子生物学专业理科学士学位的全日制学生提供奖学金。学者将进入两批一年级学生，并获得四年的奖学金支持。许多在学业上有天赋的本科生由于他们的高中经历而没有为上大学做好准备，这种缺乏准备的情况阻碍了他们的成功。通过新的和成熟的策略来提高学生的成功，这个项目将通过生物入门课程中的消耗点来支持学生，并增加他们成功完成专业的机会。在新的学习领导课程中，学生将通过思考当前的科学问题来培养成为科学伦理领袖的技能。学者们将与不同背景的成功职业科学家见面，作为榜样。此外，通过向学生介绍实习和研究机会并为他们做好准备的职业研讨会，以及各种职业道路，学者将推出科学职业。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的STEM学位毕业率。这个项目的目标是让学生负担得起大学费用，这样他们就可以充分发挥自己的潜力。该项目旨在为学生提供学习技能、作为科学家的自信以及成功所需的科学内容知识。该项目将包括公认的提高学生成功的方法，包括在学者中建立社区，个性化的学术建议，以及职业指导。此外，该项目将实施一个新的学习领导课程和一个为期四天的1月份讲习班，为学生准备第二学期的生物课程，重点是设计和进行实验。本项目将通过调查参加活动的学者和其他学生对项目有效性的看法来调查这些活动的有效性。将收集关于学生成绩、该专业毕业前的保留率以及他们在大学后的下一步行动的数据，并用于为项目改进提供信息。这些数据还将用于评估这些项目活动的成效，以便通过专题介绍和出版物与全国同事分享调查结果。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 Ursinus College, a small liberal arts college. Over its five-year duration, the project will fund scholarships for 20 unique full-time students who are pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in the Neuroscience or the Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology majors. Scholars will enter in two cohorts of first-year students and receive four years of scholarship support. Many academically talented undergraduates are unprepared for college by their high school experiences and this lack of preparation stands in the way of their success. Through both novel and well-established strategies to boost student success, this project will support students through attrition points in introductory biology courses and increase their successful completion of the majors. In the new Learning to Lead course, students will develop the skills to become ethical leaders in science by considering current science issues. The Scholars will meet successful career scientists of diverse backgrounds as role models. Additionally, through career workshops that introduce students to and prepare them for internship and research opportunities, as well as various career paths, the Scholars will be launched on careers in science. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The goal of this project is to make college affordable for students so that they can reach their full potential. The project aims to provide students with the study skills, confidence in themselves as scientists, and science content knowledge necessary to succeed. The project will include well established methods of increasing student success including building community among Scholars, individualized academic advising, and career guidance. In addition, the project will implement a new Learning to Lead course and a four-day January workshop to prepare students for the second semester biology course that has an emphasis on designing and conducting experiments. This project will investigate the effectiveness of these activities through surveys of perceptions of program effectivenessm from both scholars and other students who participate in the activities. Data on student grades, retention until graduation in the major, and their next steps after college will be collected and used to inform project improvement. The data will also be used to assess the effectiveness of these project activities so that findings may be shared with colleagues nationally through presentations and publications. 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.