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.

该项目将支持德克萨斯大学埃尔帕索分校 (UTEP) 保留并毕业有经济需要的成绩优异、低收入的学生，从而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UTEP 被指定为研究活动非常高的博士大学（卡内基分类），为 24,879 名学生（约 85% 本科生）提供服务，其中 83% 的学生自我认定为西班牙裔和其中 49% 的人自认是家里第一个上大学的人，在为期六年的时间里，该项目将为 50 名在十多个领域之一攻读学士学位的独特全日制学生提供奖学金。 UTEP 理学院代表了同等数量的 UTEP 本地大三学生和从埃尔帕索社区学院转学到 UTEP 的学生，他们每人都将接受两年的学习。项目参与者将参与一系列课程和课外活动，其中包括基于跨学科课程的本科生研究经验（CURE）、领导力和社区参与课程、教师指导的研究经验以及专业发展研讨会。为了参与如此高影响力的实践，学者们还将有机会在地方和国家会议上传播他们的研究成果，并将创建一个电子档案袋，记录他们在大学期间取得的成就。该项目旨在与大学建立密切的合作伙伴关系。学术和非学术利益相关者的多样性有助于扩大对如何最好地支持 STEM 专业学生实现个人和职业抱负的理解。该项目的总体目标是提高低收入、高成就的 STEM 学位完成率虽然学生参与上述高影响力的实践已被证明可以促进学生的成功，但并非所有学生群体都能获得这些机会，也不一定所有学生都能平等地参与此类经历。解决这一差距并为了更好地了解高影响力实践对这一人群中学生的认知、情感和社会心理结果的相对影响，我们使用来自先前验证的调查措施和半结构化/焦点小组访谈的混合方法设计了一个研究部分。旨在阐明项目活动如何影响学者的科学身份、领导技能发展、研究人员自我效能、归属感和学术自我概念。将进行社交网络分析，以考察学者的个人和专业网络。如果有的话，是在整个过程中进化的他们参与该项目，特别是他们获得和获得的资本类型。该项目旨在贡献有关各种课程和课外干预措施对学生水平成果的功效和影响的新知识，并将解决这些问题。最终有助于提高具有经济需求的低收入、成绩优异的本科生完成 STEM 学位的更广泛目标的背景特征，包括研究团队和项目学者产生的产品。通过同行评审的出版物和演示并将在 UTEP 的网站上重点介绍该项目，该项目由 NSF 的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，该项目旨在增加具有经济需求的低收入学术天才学生获得 STEM 领域学位的数量。它还旨在改善未来 STEM 工作者的教育，并生成反映低收入学生的成功、保留、转学、毕业以及学术/职业道路的学术知识。该奖项是 NSF 的法定使命，并被认为值得支持通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。