This project is a consortium of four Shenandoah Valley higher education institutions: Blue Ridge Community College, Bridgewater College, Eastern Mennonite University, and James Madison University. These institutions are collaborating on a series of activities to attract and retain students in STEM majors on the different campuses. In recent years, each institution has experienced declining enrollments in some or all of its STEM programs. This project is designed to reverse these trends and also to increase the diversity of STEM majors. Six activities are being implemented to increase the enrollment and graduation of STEM majors: i) A summer bridge program for entering students to build their mathematics skills, to introduce the range of possible STEM majors available to students at the participating institutions, and to introduce them to STEM-based problem solving with real world problems; ii) A unique set of coordinated learning communities across the campuses that will focus on STEM themes; iii) Efforts to build on the Shenandoah Valley Partnership, a Shenandoah Valley consortium of government, business, and education institutions, in order to offer STEM-based internships and employment opportunities; iv) A set of STEM faculty development activities given jointly between the four campuses to build faculty awareness of key issues in retaining students in STEM majors and build skills in using effective pedagogy; v) Outreach activities to K-12 teachers and counselors to help build and sustain interest and demand for STEM majors after the end of the project; and vi) Campus-specific activities that will focus on unique STEM issues and programs at each of the four institutions. SRI, International is providing extensive formative and summative assessment of these activities. By the 5th year of the project, these efforts are expected to produce an annual increase of 100 additional STEM degrees and more than 220 additional STEM degrees through the duration of the project. Knowledge gained in this project can be expected to lead to more effective strategies for coordination and articulation among community colleges and 4-year institutions. This knowledge will be of growing value due to the growing number of articulation agreements between 2-year and 4-year institutions.
The goal of the Bridging the Valley project was to bring together the higher education institutions in the Central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (Blue Ridge Community College, Bridgewater College, Eastern Mennonite University, and James Madison University) to increase the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates. In addition, we wanted to work with faculty at our institutions to help them improve the ongoing recruiting and retention of students into these programs. Our stated goal was to increase the number of graduates by 100 per year by the end of the funding period and have a total of 200 additional STEM graduates. As the table below shows, we dramatically surpassed that goal, both in terms of graduates, and the total number of STEM majors, which increased by more than 50% during the grant period. Our students have earned an additional 333 STEM degrees in the final year and almost 1,000 additional STEM degrees over the period of funding. Year Graduates* Majors 2008-09 (before funding) 617 3,249 2009-10 595 3,531 2010-11 717 3,920 2011-12 886 3,922 2012-13 920 4,536 2013-14 (funding ends) 950 4,947 *These numbers include Associates degrees from Blue Ridge Community College While the increase was not solely due to our efforts, we worked to develop ways to help students with a declared interest in a STEM major persist to a degree. We did this primarily through offering a Summer Bridge workshop in which students came to our campuses for three weeks in the summer and worked on their mathematics skills and were introduced to a variety of different STEM disciplines. We also worked with the students to help them develop good study habits and coping skills to help give them a boost over the hurdles that college poses rather than have them give up. We supplemented the summer workshop with a set of school year community building activities. These activities varied from campus to campus, but they focused on developing support networks, taking advantage of helpful campus resources, and looking ahead to potential careers. Student response to both the summer and the school year community building activities was extremely positive and a key to the success of the project. We focused our attention on students who would traditionally start in a STEM major, but drop out, and we were able to retain almost 70% in their chosen major. Our work with faculty helped to build new connections between our institutions and gave us the chance to bring national leaders to the Shenandoah Valley to offer workshops and spark conversation. We particularly focused on bringing in leaders from programs with a track record of success in recruiting and retaining STEM majors. The sessions received very good reviews and have helped faculty bring a new perspective to their interactions with students. We also worked with students in their later years to help identify internships and job shadowing to hone their career focus and plan for life after college. Many STEM majors, including students that had no other connection to the program, took advantage of these services and were connected to opportunities, both locally and regionally. Finally, we partnered with SRI, International. to carefully document and evaluate our efforts. Through ongoing surveys, interviews, and focus groups, we were able to determine which parts of our project were working well and which parts needed to be changed. We also compared the performance of students who took part in Bridging the Valley activities and similar students who did not. At JMU, we did find that BTV students performed better in math class and were more likely to be retained in their chosen STEM major. All in all, the project was a significant success. Both the number of STEM majors and STEM graduates grew substantially and we were able to impact all four of our campuses. Even after funding has ended, we’re continuing to work to bring additional changes to the ways in which we recruit and retain STEM majors.
