Challenging Problems and Sustainable Solutions - Training a community of Interdisciplinary Sustainability Scholars

该项目将通过支持威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校(威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校)高成就、低收入、有经济需求的学生的留校和毕业，促进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。在为期6年的时间里，该项目将为至少26名攻读工程、生物、化学、环境科学和数学等学士学位的全日制学生提供奖学金。它还将支持至少6名低年级STEM转学学生。受资助的学生将参加现有的多种以可持续发展为重点的证书之一，作为一个队列定期会面，并将有机会成为其他专业发展经验的一部分。这个项目的一个显著特点是，在一年级和二年级期间，有机会在可持续发展办公室进行带薪暑期实习，以便在学生的学术生涯早期获得可持续发展方面的专业经验。在三年级和四年级，学生将参加社区环境学者计划研讨会，这将帮助他们探索他们的STEM学科和他们的可持续发展重点如何与社区服务相联系。该项目的广泛影响将改善低收入学生接受STEM教育的机会，并确保他们成功完成学位。该项目还明确地将STEM学生与可持续发展和社区参与等广泛问题联系起来，这有助于培养全面发展的毕业生，同时也促进学生留在STEM。该项目的智力价值包括开发方法来教育STEM专业人员，以满足美国的战略可持续发展需求。该项目通过向来自不同学科的STEM学生提供基于队列的可持续发展培训来应对这一挑战，并明确培训这些学生作为更广泛的可持续发展专业社区的一部分在团队中工作。该项目的总体目标是提高低收入、高成就、有经济需求的本科生的STEM学位完成率。该项目的目标和具体目标包括增加低收入STEM学生的可持续发展专家数量。可持续发展被认为是招收和留住学生的一个有吸引力的主题。该项目将通过调查和访谈进行评估，以确定它是否会在具有挑战性的STEM学科中产生更好的保留力和持久性。项目成果将通过威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的教学网络和外部纪律会议在内部共享。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 the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW-Madison). Over its 6-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to at least 26 full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees fields such as engineering, biology, chemistry, environmental science, and mathematics. It will also support at least 6 junior STEM transfer students. The supported students will enroll in one of the multiple sustainability-focused certificates available, meet regularly as a cohort, and will have opportunities to be part of additional professional development experiences. A distinguishing feature of this project is an opportunity for paid summer internships at the Office of Sustainability between the freshman and sophomore year to gain professional experience in sustainability early in the students’ academic careers. In their junior and senior years, students will be part of a Community Environmental Scholars Program seminar, which will help them explore how their STEM discipline and their sustainability focus can connect to community service. The broader impacts of the project will improve access to STEM education for low-income students and ensure their successful degree completion. The project also explicitly connects STEM students with the broad issues of sustainability and community engagement, which can help to create well-rounded graduates while also promoting retention of students in STEM. The intellectual merit of the project involves the development of methods to educate STEM professionals to meet the strategic sustainability needs of the United States. The project meets this challenge by offering cohort-based sustainability training to STEM students from a wide range of disciplines, and explicitly training those students to work in teams as parts of a broader community of sustainability professionals.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project goals and specific aims include increasing the number of low-income STEM students who are sustainability experts. Sustainability has been suggested as an attractive theme with which to recruit and retain students. The project will be evaluated using surveys and interviews to see if it results in better retention and persistence in challenging STEM disciplines. The project results will be shared internally, through teaching and learning networks at UW–Madison, and externally through disciplinary conferences. 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.