HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Building a Problem-Solving Community of Scholars in STEM

在改善本科STEM教育的支持下：西班牙裔服务机构（HSI计划），这条轨道2：IEP旨在提高学生的成功，保留和学位的持续性在休斯顿大学代表性不足的科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）专业。虽然从高中过渡到大学仍然是STEM学生的挑战，但许多机构提供各种课程以提高第一年的保留率，包括本科研究，课堂主动学习，生活和学习社区，夏桥课程和同伴引导学习。然而，大二的保留已经成为一个非常关注的持久性，因为这是当STEM学生通常报名参加关键的“网关”课程，并有针对性的编程，以实现在这些课程的成功往往是不可用的。对于那些在STEM专业和职业中代表性不足的群体来说，这可能更具挑战性，因为他们也在努力建立社区感和归属感。休斯顿大学（UH）是一所指定的西班牙裔和亚洲，美洲原住民和太平洋岛民服务机构，并被《美国新闻与世界报道》评为学生种族多样性的前十名。UH的这个项目将为大一之后的STEM专业提供支持，并培养一个学习者社区，以促进坚持完成学位。 该项目的总体目标是通过实施基于证据的干预措施和最佳实践来提高STEM学生的保留率，以提高学生的内容知识，培养他们的归属感，并加强他们的STEM身份，以促进大一之后的成功。这将通过一个为期5周的学者桥梁计划（大一和大二之间），让学生接触到大学生级别的“网关”课程内容，技能和社区建设的问题解决研讨会，并通过保证4.0学习系统提供支持来完成，该系统将为STEM学生的成功学习过程提供量身定制的指导和反馈。该项目的结果将提供有关如何支持编程可以实施，规模和持续促进代表性不足的少数民族学生在干成功的知识。它还将有助于社区文化财富的研究文献，通过发现相关的知识，可能会抑制和有助于代表性不足的STEM学生在HSI背景下的成功因素。HSI计划旨在加强本科STEM教育，并建立HSI的能力。HSI计划支持的项目也将产生关于如何实现这些目标的新知识。该奖项反映了NSF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。

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 2: IEP aims to improve student success, retention, and degree persistence among underrepresented Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors at the University of Houston. While transitioning from high school to college remains a challenge for students in STEM, many institutions provide various programming for improving first-year retention rates, including undergraduate research, active learning in the classroom, living and learning communities, summer bridge programming, and peer-led learning. However, sophomore year retention has become a great concern for persistence since this is when STEM students typically enroll in key “gateway” courses, and targeted programming for achieving success in these courses is often times not available. For groups, who are underrepresented in STEM majors and careers, this may be more challenging as they also work to establish a sense of community and belonging in their major departments. The University of Houston (UH) is a designated Hispanic and Asian, Native American and Pacific Islander Serving institution and is ranked in the top ten by US News and World Report for student ethnic diversity. This program at UH will provide support for STEM majors beyond their freshmen year and foster a community of learners to promote persistence to degree completion. The overarching goal of this project is to improve STEM student retention by implementing evidence-based interventions and best practices to enhance students’ content knowledge, develop their sense of belonging, and strengthen their STEM identity to promote success beyond the freshman year. This will be accomplished through a 5-week Problem-Solving Community of Scholars bridge program (between freshmen and sophomore year) that exposes students to sophomore-level “gateway” course content, a problem-solving workshop for skills and community building, and support via the Guaranteed 4.0 Learning System which will provide tailored guidance and feedback on the process of learning for STEM student success. The results of this project will provide knowledge on how support programming can be implemented, scaled, and sustained for promoting underrepresented minority student success in STEM. It will also contribute to the Community Cultural Wealth research literature by uncovering knowledge related to factors that may inhibit and contribute to the success of underrepresented STEM students in a HSI context. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.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.