Improving the retention and success of low-income and first-generation (LIFG) students, overwhelmingly enrolled in community colleges, is critical for increasing the number of STEM graduates nationwide. Red Rocks Community College, Lakewood, Colorado in partnership with the Colorado School of Mines will develop new approaches and models that better engage and support LIFG students in pre-engineering programs in order to provide deeper and more integrated learning experiences. This will lead to improved success, retention, and transfer to four-year institutions for LIFG students in engineering.
Four types of interrelated activities are proposed for the LIFG engineering students and STEM faculty at Red Rocks Community College. First, faculty workshops, conferences, and discussions will be used to develop shared understandings of the challenges facing LIFG students. STEM faculty will serve as transforming agents by developing new pedagogies and meaningful mentorships that enrich teaching and learning in the STEM disciplines. Second, nontraditional mentoring strategies and a STEM 101 course will be developed to address how social and cultural capital contribute to self-efficacy and academic success for LIFG students. Students completing STEM 101 will participate in activities leading to authentic research opportunities in engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. These undergraduate research experiences will draw on and reinforce students' STEM knowledge and build expertise in engineering. Third, students will be provided with opportunities for experiential learning on engineering projects directly relevant to their lives and their communities. These will be based on an Introduction to Design and Engineering Applications (IDEA) program already developed by Red Rocks Community College in collaboration with the Colorado School of Mines and the Engineering by Doing (EbD) program developed by the Humanitarian Engineering program at the Colorado School of Mines. Fourth, the partnership between Red Rocks Community College and the Colorado School of Mines will be developed as a model for building community college-university collaborations that provide LIFG students with stronger academic preparation and more accessible pathways for transfer to 4-year institutions and for developing careers in engineering.
The project will investigate how these activities contribute to STEM learning and retention through a pre/post design that will compare a set of metrics that establish baseline measures of retention, success in gatekeeper courses, number of STEM students who reach second tier STEM courses, and success in these courses. Information also will be collected through student and faculty surveys, inventories, questionnaires, direct observations, and academic capstone assessments of integrated learning. The goals are to generate models and evidence on these approaches and provide materials that will be useful for other community colleges struggling to address the important issues of low enrollment, poor performance, weak retention, and lack of persistence among low-income and first-generation students in engineering and STEM.
