Through a partnership with three community colleges (Columbus State Community College, Stark State College of Technology and Washington State Community College) the Ohio State University is working in three distinct socioeconomic regions of the state to recruit and retain a broad population of STEM majors. A summer bridge program with curricular and industrial or research internship components introduces pre-college students to career options and guides them into appropriate secondary school and post-secondary options aimed at reducing the necessity for remediation at the college and university level. A second bridge program for transfer students from community colleges is reducing the barriers to success at university. Finally, peer-mentoring and academic support structures are in place within all of the collaborating institutions to maintain continuous support for the students through graduation. The intellectual merit of the project's activities rests on the large scale implementation of successful approaches for supporting a broad range of STEM students. Strong disciplinary faculty involvement and collaboration across the four campuses is also present, as well as significant institutional support. The broader impacts of the project lie in its establishment of a successful model of collaboration across STEM disciplines and among constituent two-year colleges and a major university. Secondly, the project has a self-sustaining capacity through the training of students to be mentors before they graduate and the provision of opportunities for them to continue mentoring after graduation.
The Ohio Science & Engineering Talent Expansion Program (OSTEP) is a partnership between The Ohio State University, Columbus State Community College, Washington State Community College and Stark State College of Technology to increase the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates. The intellectual merit of the project was a coordinated effort to increase STEM retention and degree completion at all partner institutions with an emphasis on first-generation students and underrepresented populations. Over the 6 years of offering the bridge program at OSU, the demographics were 60% URM, 45% Female (underrepresented in engineering), and 41% First-generation. The 2009 baseline STEM population at OSU overall was 8% URM, 32% female and 17% first generation. STEM degree completion increased at all institutions during the award period (Figure 1). The change in number of STEM majors at each institution is also shown. The small 8% change at OSU represents over 1000 students while the 6% decrease at Washington State Community College represents 13 students The CSCC OSTEP program implemented numerous changes to campus, including a summer bridge (first-time for the institution) and STEM club that together comprise the STEM program. CSCC and OSU also leveraged a Choose Ohio First (COF) scholarship program through the Ohio Board of Regents called "Future Scientists of Ohio" (FSO). These scholarships were offered to CSCC OSTEP participants and qualifying students could also get an equivalent scholarship at OSU after transferring. Through these changes, the CSCC OSTEP students performed considerably better either graduating or transferring than the control group as shown in Figure 2. The CSCC cohort (control) consists of first-year students who declared an Associate of Science (AS) major upon entry to college and were not part of OSTEP program (2009, N = 482 ; 2010, N = 530 ; 2011, N = 593). OSTEP cohort consists of first-year students who were recruited into the OSTEP program as AS majors (2009, N = 23, 2010, N = 16, 2011, N = 19). At WSCC, the percent of students moving on to Calculus II from Calculus I increased from 12% to 31% and 50% of incoming students tested higher on the Math Compass as a result of OSTEP activities. WSCC and OSU physics instructors have developed a collaborative teaching program. The physics instructors collaborate to introduce WSCC physics students to the workings of a four-year university by synchronizing their academic calendars and using the same course materials to prepare them for eventual transfer to a four-year institution. Continuity has greatly enhanced the program by having the same physics instructors involved from both institutions since the program inception. Physics students from WSCC have participated in recitation activities on the OSU campus, as well as campus tours. The FSO participants at CSCC were also tracked for graduation rate (Table 1). The 2010 entering cohort of students from CSCC did not participate in the CSCC OSTEP program but the 2011 cohort did participate. The 2011 cohort showed an improved time to graduation as shown by a higher graduation rate. Table 1. FSO Participant graduation rate from OSU after transferring from CSCC Entering year at OSU 2010 2011 (1st FSO Cohort) (2nd FSO Cohort) 4yr. rate 5yr .rate 4yr. rate 5 yr. rate Non-FSO STEM Graduation Rate 52.4% 73.5%i 45.6%ii 73.5%i FSO Student Graduation Rate 15% 77% 27.3% 80%iii i. Institutional average of Non-COF STEM graduation rate in the last 5 years for the OSU Columbus Campus. ii. Institutional average of Non-COF STEM graduation rate in the last 4 years for the OSU Columbus Campus. The Ohio State OSTEP project also displayed strong retention to STEM majors as shown in Figures 2-5 (see attachment). Participants in the bridge program are retained to STEM majors at or above levels exhibited by the university STEM population. The program has shown consistent results across 5 years of offering and continues to demonstrate success in this metric. First-year retention of participants varies widely among our cohorts but the data show clear positive gains for 3rd year retention compared to the university cohort (Figure 2). Our programs have a relatively high percentage of Underrepresented Minority students. Figure 3 shows positive retention gains fo URM participants out to the 3rd year. Females are underrepresented in engineering but not necessarily in the biological sciences. We include them as a separate demographic group here for completeness. Figure 4 shows again a strong positive gain in persistence to the 3rd for participants compared to all females entering as STEM majors. First generation participant retention is shown in Figure 5 and indicates positive gains in persistence over the university population out to the 3rd year for all but Cohort 1.
