S-STEM: Addressing Disparities in STEM Educational Access and Outcomes among Low-Income Students

S-STEM：解决低收入学生在 STEM 教育机会和成果方面的差异

• 批准号: 2322771
• 负责人: Angel Marti
• 金额: $ 250万
• 依托单位: William Marsh Rice University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-03-01 至 2030-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2322771&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: STEM; Addressing; Disparities; Educational; Access

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 Rice University. Rice University is a small, private, four-year institution of higher education located in Houston, Texas, a city of approximately 2.4 million people that stands as the most diverse city in the United States. Over its 6-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 53 unique, full-time students every year who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering disciplines. This project will facilitate the transition of a group of academically talent low-income students from the time they are admitted to college to the start of their major core courses—and then throughout the remainder of their undergraduate programs. The project will begin in the summer and will combine a six-week, immersive bridge program that will cover the most challenging topics students will face in first-year mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science courses with numerous interventions: individualized professional advisors’ coaching throughout the students’ time at Rice, cohort-building activities, and other interventions designed to fuel persistence and remove barriers for success. Moreover, the project will sponsor summer activities such as opportunities to participate in state-of-the-art research, internships, and summer courses. This S-STEM grant will support academically talented low-income students in science and engineering, strengthening the pipeline of professionals across all STEM fields, while shedding light on the significance of critical events in the formation of STEM identity and persistence to a degree completion in STEM, as well as the effectiveness of the project in addressing student needs. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The central hypothesis is that by using a series of carefully planned and integrated interventions, it will be possible to remove the barriers that lead to attrition in STEM and, thereby, advance persistence and academic success. The overall goal will be accomplished by pursuing the following objectives: 1) mitigate disparities in access to educational opportunities by helping students acquire core STEM content knowledge and develop college-ready study habits and skills; 2) provide an intentionally designed cohort experience that fosters belongingness and cultivates students’ identity as members of the Rice science and engineering communities; 3) coach and mentor students throughout their college studies to build social capital and navigate or remove barriers to persistence; and, 4) provide summer academic and scholarly opportunities for sophomore and junior students. Critical events (called shocks) cause individual students to re-evaluate their educational arrangements, in part because shocks send messages about identity and expected futures. To understand the types of shocks experienced by students, the perceptions of their severity, and whether they differ by student socioeconomic status, a series of qualitative interviews will be performed. In addition, quantitative studies of student identity upon matriculation (i.e., STEM and status identity), shocks experienced during their first two years of study, and an assessment of student outcomes will be performed. The project will advance understanding of the types of critical events that students are experiencing, perceptions of the severity of those critical events, whether these perceptions differ by student status, and the effectiveness of the project in mitigating the adverse effects of these events. The success of the project will be assessed by formative and summative external evaluation, and the results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and papers presented at academic conferences. The project will also host a half-day workshop every summer to share effective strategies with other universities and community colleges across Texas. 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.

该项目将需要在美国6年期间，在赖斯大学的高等教育机构，在赖斯大学的高等教育机构中，有教育的科学家和毕业。 ，该项目将为每年追求科学和工程学科学士学位的53名独特的，全职的学生提供资金。在其主要核心核心核心核心的开始时，将涵盖第一年数学，物理，化学和计算机科学课程中最具挑战性的主题的M，其中包括许多国际：个性化的专业顾问“指导学生教练学生”在米饭和其他持续的时间里，其他时间都会介入toel的持久性和成人的机会。 ，在所有STEM领域的专业人员中跨越了专业人士的管道，同时阐明了茎形成和持久性的关键事件的重要性，以达到茎的整体目标。 - incom，高成就的地下表现出财务需求。通过帮助学生的侵权行为，可以培养学生的身份，并培养学生作为稻米科学和工程社区的成员； RINICATION事件（称为震惊）会使他们的教育安排和期望的期货重新评估补充，对学生的定量研究。在减轻这些事件的广告事件的项目中，预测的外部评估的成功，结果将在学术会议上播出，将在学术会议上进行半天的研讨会。夏季，在德克萨斯州分享该项目的有效策略旨在对未来的STEM工人的教育，并为低收入学生的学术成功，转移以及IC/职业途径促进，并反映了NSF'SFLECTS NSF'SFLECTS，并被视为值得通过评估的支持Usindation的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准。