This award renews NSF support of the Louisiana State University Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Research Scholars Program (LA-STEM). LA-STEM is a multidisciplinary pilot program designed to increase the number of underrepresented students who receive baccalaureate and doctoral degrees in STEM disciplines, and to demonstrate a successful model for this goal that can be ported, in whole or in part, to other institutional settings. It is a research-based activity targeting the holistic development of a highly achieving workforce. LA-STEM combines six primary components ? recruitment, selection, a summer bridge, mentoring, education, and research to achieve its objectives of maintaining a steady-state population of 80 LA-STEM Scholars, recruiting approximately 15-20 new students each year; sustaining a minimum 75% retention rate of LA-STEM Scholars through graduation within five years; and facilitating the enrollment of at least 50% of these students in Ph.D. programs in STEM areas within three years of their graduation from LSU.
The intellectual merit of this project is that it builds a model for student success in the STEM disciplines through a study of the effectiveness of the LA-STEM Research Scholars Program. The broader impacts of the project lie in its potential to impact education in the STEM disciplines through (1) creating a pool of well-prepared graduate students, (2) broadening participation of women and underrepresented minorities in the STEM disciplines, (3) encouraging diversity in an educational landscape historically marked by segregation, and (4) encouraging development of programs that integrate undergraduate education, research, and mentoring by showing that models such as LA-STEM and Meyerhoff can be successfully adapted to fit the contexts of individual institutions.
