Fostering Biology Major Success and Transfer in an Urban Community College in the Silicon Valley

该项目将通过支持在长青山谷学院(EVC)表现出经济需求的高成就、低收入学生，为国家对受过良好教育的科学家、技术人员、工程师和数学家的需求做出贡献。EVC是加利福尼亚州圣何塞的一所社区学院，为大约10,000名学生提供服务。该项目的一个特别推动力将是增加接触和参与生物科学工作人员的机会，特别注重低收入学生的需求。社区大学的学生是生物学专业学生和未来生物学家的潜在来源，但他们经常面临与他们的教育目标相冲突的经济和家庭需求。对于居住在硅谷的EVC学生来说尤其如此，硅谷是美国一个生活成本较高的地区。在六年的时间里，这个项目将资助四十五(45)个两年期奖学金，以帮助学者们减少工作，专注于他们的学术进步。通过队列模式、有针对性的指导、实习和参加以生物学为重点的第一年研讨会，这些生物学者将获得支持，以完成副学士学位，这将确保他们被加州公立四年制大学录取，这是他们迈向生物科学职业生涯的下一步。EVC的这个项目包括与当地为期四年的机构、生物技术公司和爱荷华州立大学(ISU)的合作。为了提高低收入、高成就、有经济需求的社区学院学生的STEM副学士学位的完成和转学，该项目将追求一个基本的项目目标，即促进学生的STEM内容知识和从社区大学到生物学士学位完成的路径导航。该项目将通过在社区大学背景下对生物学学生及其课程作业进行系统研究来实现这一目标。特别是，潜在的目标将通过混合方法评估和伴随着对学生不断发展的科学认同发展、成就、动机和校园参与度的有效性的反馈来实现。研究人员将借鉴三个关于本科理科学习和发展的互补观点，即佩雷斯对STEM专业预期价值框架的扩展，卡尔德龙的科学认同框架，以及斯坦顿-萨拉查的社会化代理人。该项目的发现将有助于从理论上理解动机和科学认同感是如何在社区大学经历中演变的。同时，调查方向将填补文献中的空白，并为社区大学应如何组织规划提供实用的见解，以促进促进学术成功和转移的关系。项目调查员将传播与项目挑战和成功相关的结果和调查结果，特别是在类似环境下的其他社区学院。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, technicians, engineers, and mathematicians by supporting high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Evergreen Valley College (EVC). EVC is a community college in San Jose, California, which serves approximately 10,000 students. A particular impetus of the project will be to increase access to, and participation in, the biological sciences workforce with a particular focus on needs of low-income students. Community college students are a potential source of biology majors and future biologists, yet they often face financial and family demands that compete with their educational goals. This is particularly true for EVC students who live in the Silicon Valley, an expensive region in the country. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund forty-five (45) 2-year scholarships to help the Scholars work less and focus on their academic progress. Through a cohort model, targeted mentorship, internships, and enrollment in a first-year biology-focused seminar, these biology scholars will be supported in their pathway towards completion of an Associates with Transfer degree, which will guarantee their admission to a California public four-year university, the next step on their way to a biological science career. This project at EVC includes partnerships with local four-year institutions, biotech companies, and Iowa State University (ISU). ISU which will serve as the institution leading project research and evaluation.To increase STEM Associates degree completion and transfer of low-income, high-achieving community college students with demonstrated financial need, the project will pursue an underlying project goal of advancing students' STEM content knowledge and pathway navigation from community college to baccalaureate completion in biology. The project will pursue this goal through a systematic study of biology students and their coursework in the community college context. In particular, the underlying goal will be achieved through mixed-methods evaluation and accompanying feedback of the efficacy of students’ evolving science identity development, achievement, motivation, and campus engagement. Investigators will draw upon three complementary perspectives on learning and development in undergraduate science; namely, Perez’s extension of the Expectancy Value framework for STEM majors, Calderon’s science identity framework, and Stanton-Salazar’s agents of socialization. Project findings will contribute to the theoretical understanding of how motivation and science identity evolves over the community college experience. At the same time, directions of investigation will address gaps in the literature and provide practical insight into how community colleges should organize programming in order to foster relationships that promote academic success and transfer. Project investigators will disseminate outcomes and findings related to project challenges and successes, especially to other community colleges in a similar setting. 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.