Project SOAR is recruiting, retaining, and graduating academically talented students as majors from the departments of biological sciences, chemistry, physics and geology, mathematics and statistics, or computer science. Four cohorts of students are being organized, beginning with 17 scholars in the freshman year and with continuing support of 15 scholars for the cohorts from their sophomore through senior years. The multi-disciplinary nature of the project is supporting collaborations between faculty in the participating disciplines.
SOAR scholars are being supported in a variety of ways to ensure their academic success; these services include enhanced faculty mentoring, year-long freshman seminar, STEM learning communities, a STEM living community, peer tutoring, and peer mentoring. SOAR students are being offered strong undergraduate research opportunities, internships, and co-ops and the project is being informed by both internal and external advisory boards.
The SOAR project is coherently designed around effective practices for increasing retention and graduation rates for low-income, first-generation students. The project is increasing the participation of members of groups underrepresented in STEM and is increasing the number of STEM graduates that will contribute to alleviating the region's needs. The project is producing data via multiple modes of assessment and evaluation that will inform institutional changes in recruiting practices, design of first-year courses, use of discipline-specific learning communities, and academic support services.
