Fostering Excellence as a Means to Increase Motivation and Persistence of Undergraduates in STEM

该项目将有助于对受过良好教育的科学家，数学家，工程师和技术人员的国家需要，通过支持高成就，低收入学生的保留和毕业，证明在摩根州立大学，历史上最大的黑人学院和大学在马里兰州的财务。在五年的时间里，该项目将为30名正在攻读生物学，化学，数学和/或物理学学士学位的本科学者提供奖学金。一年级学生将获得长达四年的奖学金，转学生将获得长达两年的奖学金支持。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，包括指导，本科生研究经验，服务学习，外联项目，研究生院准备和参加学科特定会议。在导师的帮助下，学者们将制定个人发展计划，概述他们的职业目标，并描述实现这些目标所需的步骤。该项目还将支持课程改进，旨在提高STEM的整体一年级学生保留率。该项目旨在将大学的最佳做法塑造成一个可以在全国范围内实施的模式。为此，该项目将产生关于如何使用Tinto的持久性模型来理解提高自我效能感，归属感和STEM课程感知的活动类型的新知识，特别是对于非裔美国STEM学生。 这三个因素影响学生的动机，进而影响持久性。由于该大学的学生人数超过80%是非洲裔美国人，因此该项目有可能扩大STEM领域的参与，并揭示指导和个人发展计划如何支持非裔美国人本科生在STEM中的保留和毕业。该项目的总体目标是增加低收入，高成就的本科生的STEM学位完成，并证明经济需要。该项目的一个具体目标是增加对项目活动如何影响学者在STEM学科和职业生涯中的成功，动机和坚持的理解。关于非裔美国学生的持久性模型的研究很少。该项目旨在通过解决三个研究问题来帮助填补这一研究空白：（a）项目活动如何影响非裔美国人STEM学者的自我效能感、归属感和对STEM课程的看法？(b)该项目对学者坚持STEM学科有什么影响？以及（c）学者如何描述该计划的要素，这些要素对他们在STEM学科和职业中的目标，动机和坚持性产生积极影响？ 该项目将Tinto的持久性理论模型与大学在数学准备，主动学习，块调度和本科研究方面的最佳实践相结合。 该项目的主要预期成果是开发一个HBCU STEM框架，利用大学经验提高学生的积极性，从而提高持久性。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, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial at Morgan State University, the largest Historically Black College and University in Maryland. Over its five-year duration, this project will provide scholarships to 30 undergraduate Scholars who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and/or Physics. First-year students will receive up to four years and transfer students will receive up to two-years of scholarship support. The project aims to increase student persistence in STEM fields by linking scholarships with effective supporting activities, including mentoring, undergraduate research experiences, service learning, outreach projects, graduate school preparation, and participation in discipline-specific conferences. With the help of mentors, the Scholars will create Individual Development Plans outlining their career goals and describing the steps needed to achieve those goals. The project will also support curriculum improvements aimed at improving overall first-year student retention in STEM. The project seeks to shape the University’s best practices into a model that may be implemented across the nation. To this end, the project will generate new knowledge about how Tinto’s persistence model can be used to understand the kinds of activities that improve self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and perception of STEM curricula, particularly for African American STEM students. These three factors influence student motivation, which in turn influences persistence. Because the University has a student population that is more than 80% African American, this project has the potential to broaden participation in STEM fields and to reveal how mentoring and individual development plans may support retention and graduation of African American undergraduates in STEM.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. A specific goal of the project is to increase understanding about how project activities affect Scholars’ success, motivation, and persistence in STEM disciplines and careers. Research on persistence models for African American students is scarce. This project aims to help fill this research gap by addressing three research questions: (a) How do the project activities impact African American STEM Scholars’ self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and perception of the STEM curriculum? (b) What is the impact on the project on Scholars’ persistence in STEM disciplines? and (c) How do Scholars characterize the elements of the program that positively impact their goals, motivation, and persistence in STEM disciplines and careers? This project couples Tinto’s persistence theory model with the University’s best practices in math preparation, active learning, block scheduling, and undergraduate research. The major expected outcome of the project is to develop an HBCU STEM framework that leverages university experiences to enhance student motivation, thus leading to increased persistence. 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.