Under the supervision of the Tidewater Community College Women's Center, the Pioneer Project is demonstrating that bright, community college women at risk of dropping out of college can graduate within three years with A. S degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) prepared for transfer to B. S. programs.
The objectives of the project include: 1. Persistence to graduation. 115 women, who would not have been able to graduate in STEM majors, graduate. 2. Retention of women. Retention of women students in STEM classes rises from the present level of 74% to 85%. 3. Recruitment. The number of women enrolled in STEM disciplines rises from current levels of 40% to 59%, their proportion of the college population. 4. Academic and career success. Long-term tracking shows that 60% of participants are persisting at the transfer college and entering their chosen profession.
Project participants are being tested to assure that they are in the best program for their interests and abilities. They receive both academic advising and intervention counseling. Trained supplementary instruction leaders as well as mentors are available to all participants. Participants meet regularly in a support group for career guidance and transfer assistance. STEM faculty attend annual workshops to receive training in how to create a female-friendly classroom and select materials intrinsically interesting to women; faculty are also be helped to improve their academic advising. During their final semester, students take an experiential capstone course in women's work in which they regularly shadow a professional in their field.
Intellectual Merit: This project addresses a seldom-studied problem which is low graduation rates for bright, at risk, community college women who wish to enter STEM professions. The project builds on special assistance efforts taking place at this large, urban community college. Strategies to be employed include those which have succeeded with other populations at this college and at other colleges, but which are combined in a new form and with the addition of a newly created hands-on course for students in their last semester. Faculty workshops by an experienced trainer from an institution that has warmed its chilly classrooms for women are being carried out each year until all full-time STEM faculty are trained.
Broader Impacts: By creating a model program to benefit smart, at-risk community college women, the goals are to not only improve the environment for the college's women to succeed, but also to create materials and a replicable model that would pave the way to success in science, math, engineering, and technology for the many non-traditional college women whose only avenue to STEM professions is through the first line of access to higher education, the community college.
