We are facing a national challenge of low retention rates for STEM-interested students. At the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT), a public, predominantly undergraduate, minority-serving institution (Asian-American, Native American, Pacific Islander, AANAPISI), only 28% of high achieving (high school GPA>3.0), STEM-interested at entry, Pell-eligible, first-time-in-college (FTIC) students undergraduates have entered a STEM major by the beginning of their 2nd yr, and the proportion is significantly lower for PEERs (persons excluded from STEM due to ethnicity or race [Asai, 2020]) at only 16%, representing a substantial equity gap. To address this problem, we developed the Achieving Change in our Communities for Equity and Student Success (ACCESS) in STEM Program. Supported by an NSF S-STEM grant since 2018, the program supports low-income, STEM-interested students by providing focused mentoring, a living learning community, a course-based research experience in their first year, and scholarships in their first two years of college. Based on the Student Persistence model of Graham et al. (2013), we hypothesized that these interventions would increase retention, academic performance, and progress into and through STEM majors. Our approach builds upon existing research demonstrating the importance of early research experiences (Thiry et al., 2012) and intensive mentoring and community building, particularly in the context of AANAPISI institutions (Nguyen et al., 2018).
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“Partnerships and Collaborations Impacting Student Research Programs at Community Colleges”
The authors discuss efforts at New York’s Suffolk County Community College to engage minority and nontraditional students in STEM research and presentation opportunities. Using mixed methods and quantitative descriptive analysis, their research examines the impact of extended research experiences on the students’ academic and career paths. The 182 students in the NSF S-STEM cohorts from 2007 to 2016 had dramatically higher retention and graduation rates as well as GPAs when compared to their STEM peers not enrolled in the NSF S-STEM program. Findings indicate that community college student researchers perform better academically than their peers who chose a more traditional path and that success in STEM encourages increased college persistence. Keywords: community colleges, minority student retention, partnerships, STEM, undergraduate research http://www.cur.org/publications/curq_on_the_web/
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- Award ID(s):
- 1643757
- PAR ID:
- 10041982
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Council on Undergraduate Research quarterly
- Volume:
- 37
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1072-5830
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4-11
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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