The premise of the STEPping UP project is that building strong mentoring networks is not only one of the best ways to recruit and retain STEM majors but also a successful strategy for transferring best-practices in STEM education across disciplinary boundaries. Saint Francis University (SFU) faculty, current undergraduates, and prospective students in chemistry, mathematics, and environmental engineering have formed into interdisciplinary teams to test this premise. The teams or, "mentoring networks" conduct cross-disciplinary research during an 8 week summer session, lead week-long summer STEM academies for rising high school seniors, and engage in peer-led team-learning (PLTL) to improve retention in common "gateway" courses.
The chemistry program at SFU has had prior success with each of the initiatives being pursued in this project. The interdisciplinary mentoring networks provide ideal incubators for the organic transfer of these initiatives to SFU's mathematics and environmental engineering programs. At the same time, the effort to transfer recruitment and retention practices across disciplines allows the project to identify and correct weakness in its current practices.
To identify successes and "failures" within the project, the PIs are tracking quantitative measures such as retention/graduation rates for project participants, enrollment growth for the participating majors, and grade performance in courses where PLTL is adopted. To provide a rich context for these numerical data, the project team is also assessing the attitudes of participants in the mentoring networks using surveys and interviews. The most up-to-date project results are being made available through SFU's Science Outreach Center and can be found on the web at www.francis.edu/soc.aspx.
