This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Ursinus College, a small liberal arts college. Over its five-year duration, the project will fund scholarships for 20 unique full-time students who are pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in the Neuroscience or the Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology majors. Scholars will enter in two cohorts of first-year students and receive four years of scholarship support. Many academically talented undergraduates are unprepared for college by their high school experiences and this lack of preparation stands in the way of their success. Through both novel and well-established strategies to boost student success, this project will support students through attrition points in introductory biology courses and increase their successful completion of the majors. In the new Learning to Lead course, students will develop the skills to become ethical leaders in science by considering current science issues. The Scholars will meet successful career scientists of diverse backgrounds as role models. Additionally, through career workshops that introduce students to and prepare them for internship and research opportunities, as well as various career paths, the Scholars will be launched on careers in science.
The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The goal of this project is to make college affordable for students so that they can reach their full potential. The project aims to provide students with the study skills, confidence in themselves as scientists, and science content knowledge necessary to succeed. The project will include well established methods of increasing student success including building community among Scholars, individualized academic advising, and career guidance. In addition, the project will implement a new Learning to Lead course and a four-day January workshop to prepare students for the second semester biology course that has an emphasis on designing and conducting experiments. This project will investigate the effectiveness of these activities through surveys of perceptions of program effectivenessm from both scholars and other students who participate in the activities. Data on student grades, retention until graduation in the major, and their next steps after college will be collected and used to inform project improvement. The data will also be used to assess the effectiveness of these project activities so that findings may be shared with colleagues nationally through presentations and publications. This project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
