Supporting low-income student success in STEM through community, mentoring, and immersive research in biology and biochemistry

该项目将通过支持有经济需求的高成就、低收入STEM学生的保留和毕业，为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做出贡献。这个项目旨在提高学生在生物学和生物化学方面的成绩。这将通过为学生提供多种支持来实现，包括第一年的社区，持续的咨询和指导，持续的专业和职业发展活动，以及现实世界的研究培训。该项目将为本科生提供专业经验、学术培训以及该地区及其他地区STEM就业和研究生院所需的技能。此外，该项目将产生关于如何结合多个支持系统来促进本科生在生物学和生物化学方面的坚持和成功的见解。该项目的总体目标是提高有经济需求的低收入、高成就本科生的STEM学位完成率。该项目将在明尼苏达州立大学曼卡托分校进行，这是一所地区性综合性大学，为许多农村和第一代大学生提供服务。在为期6年的项目中，该项目将为24名攻读生物学和生物化学本科学位的学生提供奖学金。具体目标包括通过提供奖学金、支持性学习社区、持续的同伴和教师指导以及真实的第一年研究经验，消除STEM保留和成功的障碍。这种多种干预措施的结合旨在让低收入学生留在STEM专业，并支持他们在STEM领域的研究生职业生涯。虽然其中一些方法已经在文献中单独进行了评估，但本项目旨在确定这些干预措施如何协同作用，以提高STEM学生的成功和成果。通过焦点小组、调查、机构数据和直接观察，该项目将调查第一年的研究经历，加上社会整合（第一年研讨会、学习社区）和持续支持（指导、辅导、奖学金、弹出式活动），如何影响学生在生物学和生物化学方面的成功。项目成果将通过会议报告、期刊文章以及地方和区域专题讨论会传播。该项目由美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，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 STEM students with demonstrated financial need. This project aims to increase student success in biology and biochemistry. This will be accomplished by providing students with multiple supports, including first-year communities, sustained advising and mentoring, on-going professional and career development events, and real-world research training. This project will provide undergraduate students with professional experiences, academic training, and skills needed for STEM employment and graduate school in the region and beyond. Further, the project will generate insights about how combining multiple support systems can promote undergraduate student persistence and success in biology and biochemistry. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion for low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project will occur at Minnesota State University, Mankato, a regional comprehensive university that serves many rural and first-generation college students. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 24 unique students, in three cohorts, who are pursuing undergraduate degrees in biology and biochemistry. Specific goals include removing barriers to STEM retention and success by providing scholarship monies, supportive learning communities, on-going peer and faculty mentoring, and an authentic first-year research experience. This combination of multiple interventions is designed to retain low-income students in STEM majors and support their post-graduate careers in STEM. While some of these approaches have been evaluated in the literature separately, this project aims to determine how these interventions might interact synergistically to improve STEM student success and outcomes. Through focus groups, surveys, institutional data, and direct observations, the project will investigate how first-year research experiences, coupled with social integration (first-year seminar, learning community) and sustained support (mentoring, tutoring, scholarship, pop-up events), may influence student success in biology and biochemistry. Project results will be disseminated through conference presentations, journal articles, and local and regional symposia. 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.