This project is providing scholarships and support services in a program that especially targets under-served populations that major in the sciences at a rate far below the rest of the student population. The project emphasizes cohort formation, trust, and community. This faculty-driven Cohorts program focuses on talented students on the threshold of success in STEM areas. Building on a successful pilot project, the project has a dual structure of cohort support: the first comprises academic-year students in their first and second years (FOCUS), followed by the research-oriented Summer Science Fellows (SSF). The cohorts receive coordinated academic support, advising, mentoring, and career exploration opportunities. Each FOCUS cohort includes up to sixteen students, each of whom is receiving S-STEM scholarships and loan reduction. The SSF cohorts of four to six students each year also receive S-STEM academic-year scholarships and two years of summer-research funding from other sources. Over four years the initiative is supporting up to eighty-four unique FOCUS and eighteen SSF students, assuming some overlap between the cohorts.
Regarding broader impact, this project affects, especially through assessment and dissemination by the college's Science Education Resource Center, the college's HHMI-linked alliances and regional and national organizations via NSF-funded LSAMP MN North Star Alliance.
The project's intellectual merit stems from the strength of the science programs and an overall strategy adapted to the college's environment after a systematic national investigation of successful programs. As the student population becomes increasingly diverse, the college's future success in the sciences hinges on increased engagement of traditionally under-served students.
