The 2012 President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report “Engage to Excel: Producing One Million Additional College Graduates with Degrees in Science,Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” indicated that addressing the retention problem in the first two years of college is the most promising and cost-effective strategy to produce the STEM professionals needed in order to retain US historical preeminence in science and technology. The California Community College System, with its 112 community colleges and 71 off-campus centers enrolling approximately 2.3 million students (roughly a third of all US community college students) is in a prime position to grow the future STEM workforce.However, in the face of shrinking resources and increasing costs and other barriers, an effective approach is needed in order to capitalize on this opportunity. One prong in this approach is to more fully exploit modern technological capabilities to reduce costs, broaden access, and improve educational productivity. This paper presents preliminary results of a collaborative project, Creating Alternative Learning Strategies for Transfer Engineering Programs (CALSTEP), which aims to strengthen community college engineering programs using distance education and other alternative delivery strategies that will enable small-to-medium community college engineering programs to provide their students access to lower-division engineeringmore »
Improving STEM Education for Lower-division College Students at HSI by Utilizing Relevant Sociocultural and Academic Experiences: First-year Results from ASSURE-US Project
Despite national efforts in increasing representation of minority students in STEM disciplines, disparities prevail. Hispanics account for 17.4% of the U.S. population, and nearly 20% of the youth population (21 years and below) in the U.S. is Hispanic, yet they account for just 7% of the STEM workforce. To tackle these challenges, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has granted a 5-year project – ASSURE-US, that seeks to improve undergraduate education in Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) at California State University, Fullerton. The project seeks to advance student success during the first two years of college for ECS students. Towards that goal, the project incorporates a very diverse set of approaches, such as socio-cultural and academic interventions. Multiple strategies including developing early intervention strategies in gateway STEM courses, creating a nurturing faculty-student interaction and collaborative learning environment, providing relevant, contextual-based learning experiences, integrating project-based learning with engineering design in lower-division courses, exposing lower-division students to research to sustain student interests, and helping students develop career-readiness skills. The project also seeks to develop an understanding of the personal, social, cognitive, and contextual factors contributing to student persistence in STEM learning that can be used by STEM faculty to improve their pedagogical and more »
- Award ID(s):
- 1832536
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10192467
- Journal Name:
- 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
- Volume:
- 1
- Issue:
- 1
- Page Range or eLocation-ID:
- 1-15
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Promoting equitable undergraduate engineering education is an overarching concern at many minority-serving institutions (MSI). In addition, historical analysis of student performance in lower-division math and engineering courses at one of the largest MSI revealed an achievement gap in performance between the underrepresented minority students and other students. Furthermore, critical analysis of underlying factors overwhelmingly suggests that academic intervention coupled with sociocultural intervention may be a possible solution to help address this problem. Academic and sociocultural intervention strategies were designed and implemented in lower-division math courses through the National Science Foundation-funded project, “Building Capacity: Advancing Student Success in Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science (ASSURE-US).” These strategies involved application-based math courses targeted explicitly at undergraduate engineering students. Results of academic intervention strategies in the lower-division math courses at one of the largest MSI demonstrate mixed effectiveness. The results of the academic intervention in lower-division Calculus I (N=150) show that 36% of students reported that the intervention was helpful and helped them learn math, while 38% were neutral. Overall, students reported having difficulty connecting the projects with the mathematics being taught. Similarly, only 10% of students expressed satisfaction with the redesigned intervention modules implemented in Integral Calculus II (N=90), while 52% were neutral.more »
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Promoting equitable undergraduate engineering education is an overarching concern at many minority-serving institutions (MSI). In addition, historical analysis of student performance in lower-division math and engineering courses at one of the largest MSI revealed an achievement gap in performance between the underrepresented minority students and other students. Furthermore, critical analysis of underlying factors overwhelmingly suggests that academic intervention coupled with sociocultural intervention may be a possible solution to help address this problem. Academic and sociocultural intervention strategies were designed and implemented in lower-division math courses through the National Science Foundation-funded project, “Building Capacity: Advancing Student Success in Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science (ASSURE-US).” These strategies involved application-based math courses targeted explicitly at undergraduate engineering students. Results of academic intervention strategies in the lower-division math courses at one of the largest MSI demonstrate mixed effectiveness. The results of the academic intervention in lower-division Calculus I (N=150) show that 36% of students reported that the intervention was helpful and helped them learn math, while 38% were neutral. Overall, students reported having difficulty connecting the projects with the mathematics being taught. Similarly, only 10% of students expressed satisfaction with the redesigned intervention modules implemented in Integral Calculus II (N=90), while 52% were neutral.more »
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