Accelerating STEM Success through Experiences for Transfer and Third-Year Students

通过转学生和三年级学生的经验加速 STEM 成功

• 批准号: 2130075
• 负责人: Jeffrey Olimpo
• 金额: $ 148.35万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at El Paso
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-10-15 至 2027-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2130075&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Accelerating; STEM; Success; through; Experiences

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 need at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Designated as a Doctoral University with Very High Research Activity (Carnegie Classification), UTEP serves 24,879 students (~85% undergraduates), 83% of whom self-identify as Hispanic and 49% of whom self-identify as the first in their families to attend college. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 50 unique full-time students who are pursuing Bachelor’s degrees in one of more than ten fields (e.g., biological sciences, geological sciences, mathematics) represented in UTEP’s College of Science. This will include equal numbers of native UTEP juniors and students transferring to UTEP from El Paso Community College, who will each receive two-year scholarships. Project participants will be involved in a suite of curricular and co-curricular activities to include an interdisciplinary course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE), leadership and community engagement course, faculty-mentored research experiences, and professional development workshops. In addition to participating in such high impact practices, scholars will also have an opportunity to disseminate the findings of their research at local and national conferences and will create an ePortfolio documenting their accomplishments during their time at the university. The project aims to establish close partnerships with a diversity of academic and non-academic stakeholders who contribute to a broadening understanding of how to best support STEM majors in achieving their personal and professional ambitions.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. While student engagement in high-impact practices such as those mentioned above has been shown to foster student success, these opportunities are not always accessible to all student populations, nor do all students necessarily participate equally in such experiences. To address this disparity and to better understand the relative impact of high-impact practices on the cognitive, affective, and psychosocial outcomes of students in this population, a research component has been designed using mixed methods approaches. Data from previously validated survey measures and semi-structured/focus group interviews aim to shed light on how the projects' activities influence scholars’ science identity, leadership skills development, researcher self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and academic self-concept. Social network analyses will be performed to examine how scholars’ personal and professional networks evolve, if at all, over the course of their participation in the project, especially with respect to the types of capital that they acquire and access. This project aims to contribute new knowledge regarding the efficacy and impact of various curricular and co-curricular interventions on student-level outcomes, and will also address the contextual features that ultimately contribute to the broader goal of increasing STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. Results of this project, including products generated by both the research team and project scholars, will be made available through peer-reviewed publications and presentations and will be highlighted on UTEP’s website. 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.

该项目将通过支持德克萨斯大学El Paso大学（UTEP）的高分，低收入学生的保留和毕业，这将促进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求。 UTEP被指定为具有很高研究活动的博士大学（卡内基分类），为24,879名学生（约85％的本科生）服务，其中83％的人自我识别为西班牙裔，其中49％的人自我识别为家庭中第一个上大学的人。在六年的持续时间内，该项目将为50名独特的全日制学生提供奖学金，这些学生在UTEP科学院代表的十多个领域之一（例如，生物科学，地质科学，数学）中攻读学士学位。这将包括等同数量的本地UTEP大三学生和来自El Paso社区学院的UTEP的学生，他们将获得两年奖学金。项目参与者将参与一系列课程和课外活动，包括基于跨学科课程的本科研究经验（CURE），领导力和社区参与课程，教职员工的研究经验以及专业发展研讨会。除了参加如此高的影响实践外，学者们还将有机会在当地和民族会议上传播他们的研究结果，并将创建一个ePortfolio，记录他们在大学期间的成就。该项目旨在建立与多种学术和非学术利益相关者建立密切的合作伙伴关系，他们有助于扩大对如何最大程度地支持STEM专业的理解，以实现其个人和专业的野心。该项目的整体目标是提高低收入的STEM学位，使高级学位不足以证明经济需求。尽管上述学生参与高影响力实践的参与已被证明可以促进学生的成功，但这些机会并不总是能够得到所有学生人群的机会，也不一定都一定会同等地参与此类经验。为了解决这一差异并更好地了解高影响力实践对该人群中学生认知，情感和心理社会心理成果的相对影响，已经使用混合方法方法设计了研究组成部分。先前验证的调查措施和半结构化/焦点小组访谈的数据旨在阐明项目的活动如何影响学者的科学身份，领导技能发展，研究人员的自我效能感，归属感和学术自我概念。将进行社交网络分析，以研究学者在参与项目的过程中的个人和专业网络的发展，尤其是在他们获得和访问的资本类型方面。该项目旨在为各种现代和课外干预措施对学生水平成果的有效性和影响提供新知识，还将解决以下情况的特征，这些特征最终有助于提高低收入，高收入，高学科的本科生的更广泛的目标，并证明了经济上的财务需求。该项目的结果，包括研究团队和项目学者生产的产品，将通过同行评审的出版物和演示文稿提供，并将在UTEP的网站上强调。该项目由NSF在科学，技术，工程和数学计划方面的奖学金提供资金，该计划旨在增加具有证明经济需求的低收入学术才华的学生人数，他们在STEM领域获得了学位。它还旨在改善未来STEM工人的教育，并为低收入学生的学术成功，保留，转移，毕业以及学术/职业途径提供知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响来评估的珍贵的支​​持。