This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Utica College. Over its five-year duration, the project will fund scholarships to 14 unique Pell-eligible students pursuing bachelor’s degrees in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, or geoscience. The Scholars will enter in two cohorts and receive four-year scholarships. Based on the University’s student demographics and the project’s recruitment plan for attracting diverse applicants, the project has the potential to broaden participation of students from populations that are under-represented in STEM, including first generation in college students. In addition to receiving scholarships, the Scholars will be supported through an expanded new student orientation, success coaching using dedicated faculty and peer mentors, dedicated first-year seminar sections, tutoring, undergraduate research opportunities, career development and internships, and a seminar series on research and professional pathways. These evidence-based strategies have the potential to develop Scholars’ sense of identity in STEM and help them succeed and persist in STEM. The project will also benefit more than 100 other STEM majors, who will be invited to participate in STEM seminars and selected career and professional development workshops.
The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project will recruit, enroll, and support retention of the Scholars to graduation. It also aims to place nearly all the Scholar graduates into post-baccalaureate STEM programs or employment in STEM within six months of graduation. The project will generate new knowledge about the differential impact of peer and faculty mentoring on scholars’ sense of STEM identity and community, both of which contribute to STEM persistence. A social science researcher will conduct a mixed-methods research study investigating the differential impact of peer and faculty mentoring on Scholars’ sense of identify/community in STEM. The study will include an investigation of Scholars' STEM identity and psychosocial constructs that are associated with persistence in STEM. This study has the potential to add to the research base on the differential impact of peer and faculty mentors for the same mentee. In addition, the project is expected to generate new knowledge on the efficacy of mentoring in STEM and the extent to which peer and faculty mentors contribute to mentees’ sense of community and identity. A comprehensive external evaluation of the project will result in knowledge on the efficacy of a multifaceted STEM support program for diverse, Pell-eligible students. Results from the research study and the evaluation will be disseminated at local and national conferences. The project team intends to publish pedagogy- and process-focused articles on project results and lesson learned. 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.
