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1. Launching the Urban STEM Collaboratory

   Goodman, K Ivey (July 2020, ASEE annual conference)

   The Urban STEM Collaboratory is a tri-institution collaboration of University of Memphis (UofM), University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver), and Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Each of the three partner universities is embedded in a large city, and serves similar student populations, i.e. students who tend to be first generation, minorities, and/or commuters. These universities encounter similar challenges in first-year retention and graduation rates, especially in the STEM disciplines. As they strive to improve the first year engineering and/or mathematics student experience at their campuses, they have engaged in different approaches; including Peer Led Team Learning (PLTL), formation of an Engineering Learning Community (ELC), and engaging students in outreach as STEM Ambassadors. Incorporating these individual strengths with new activities that will be shared across institutions, the team is currently embarking on a multi-year research project to uncover how students develop STEM identity in an urban context, identify interventions that support this development, and determine the impact that STEM identity has on student success. Through the support of an NSF S-STEM grant, the three universities are also providing scholarships to students engaged in the project. Here, we share the initial efforts of our tri-campus interaction and collaboration, our overarching goals, our systems of recruiting students, and our initial collection of preliminary data and findings for Year 1. 

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2. Three Years of the Urban STEM Collaboratory

   Darbeheshti, M.; Howland Cummings, M.; Ivey, S.; Russomanno, D.; King, D.; Watt, J.; Stewart, C.; Jacobson, M.; Altman, T.; Goodman, K.; et al (August 2022, ASEE annual conference exposition proceedings)

   Launched three years ago, the Urban STEM Collaboratory is a an NSF-funded S-STEM program at three public urban research universities. With the first student scholarships awarded in Fall 2019, each campus has observed positive student outcomes even despite the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goals of the program include: to award scholarships to academically talented and financially needy undergraduate mathematical science and engineering majors; to implement student activities and supports designed to increase student success, attitudes, workforce readiness, and STEM self-efficacy; and to ensure substantial student participation in project activities through a special Badge system incentivizing participation. While the three campuses shared some aspects of the program, each campus also had unique aspects. Among the more notable campus-specific aspects of the Urban STEM Collaboratory are the use of peer-led team learning (PLTL) at one campus, a STEM ambassador program at another campus, and a robust layered peer mentorship program at the other campus. Additionally, each campus funds students for different periods of time (2 years, 3 years, or 4 years), resulting in varying student cohort sizes among campuses. Despite these unique aspects, each campus has experienced program success as measured through quantitative and qualitative student outcomes. Further, program participants (both students and faculty) from across all three campuses engage with each other regularly using virtual online platforms, creating a unique cross-campus community. This poster will report on the current state of the Urban STEM Collaboratory, including findings from all three campuses from the first three years of the S-STEM grant. 

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3. Urban STEM Collaboratory After Two Years: A Multi-institutional Approach to the Success of Financially Disadvantaged Students

   Russomanno, D J; Ivey, S; Campbell, J; Robinson, A; Stewart, CO; Alfrey, K; Watt, J; Chase, T; Darbeheshti, M; Howland_Cummings, M; et al (September 2023, Journal for STEM Education Research)

   The Urban STEM Collaboratory is a five-year project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that addresses challenges to student success in STEM disciplines through a multi-institutional collaboration via the University of Memphis (UofM), University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver), and Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Study groups, tutoring, peer and faculty mentoring, and career exploration programs are being used across the three campuses to increase the participants’ commitment to a STEM field. Innovative features from Course Networking (CN) software are being deployed to provide scholars with evidence of their learning journey while expanding a meaningful academic cloud-based social network. This paper extends a previous introductory ASEE conference paper titled: “Launching the Urban STEM Collaboratory,” (Goodman et al., 2020), which outlined the initial efforts of the tri-campus collaboration. The purpose of the present paper is to summarize the impact of the project, including data analysis of effectiveness, for Year 1: 2019-2020 and Year 2: 2020-2021. Although still in progress, with the longitudinal efficacy of several of the project’s components undetermined, the project’s organizational structure, activities, and findings to date should be of value to others conducting or proposing projects with similar goals. 

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4. Urban STEM Collaboratory After Two Years: A Multi-institutional Approach to the Success of Financially Disadvantaged Students

   Ivey, S; Campbell, J; Robinson, A; Stewart, CO; Russomanno, D J; Alfrey, K; Chase, T; Darbeheshti, M; Howland_Cummings, M; Goodman, K (September 2023, Journal of STEM Education)

   The Urban STEM Collaboratory is a five-year project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that addresses challenges to student success in STEM disciplines through a multi-institutional collaboration via the University of Memphis (UofM), University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver), and Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Study groups, tutoring, peer and faculty mentoring, and career exploration programs are being used across the three campuses to increase the participants’ commitment to a STEM field. Innovative features from Course Networking (CN) software are being deployed to provide scholars with evidence of their learning journey while expanding a meaningful academic cloud-based social network. This paper extends a previous introductory ASEE conference paper titled: “Launching the Urban STEM Collaboratory,” (Goodman et al., 2020), which outlined the initial efforts of the tri-campus collaboration. The purpose of the present paper is to summarize the impact of the project, including data analysis of effectiveness, for Year 1: 2019-2020 and Year 2: 2020-2021. Although still in progress, with the longitudinal efficacy of several of the project’s components undetermined, the project’s organizational structure, activities, and findings to date should be of value to others conducting or proposing projects with similar goals. 

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5. Board 207: ACCESS in STEM: An S-STEM Project Supporting Economically Disadvantaged STEM-Interested Students in Their First Two Years

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--42618  

   Cline, Erica; Abraham, Menaka; Alaei, Sarah; Dillon, Heather; Dinglasan-Panlilio, Joyce; Heller, Jutta; Kmail, Zaher; Lee, Seung-Jin; Ma, Eva; Nahmani, Marc; et al (June 2023, ASEE Conferences)

   Achieving Change in our Communities for Equity and Student Success (ACCESS) in STEM at the University of Washington Tacoma started as a Track 1 S-STEM program in 2018 and has supported 69 students to date. This year we received Track 2 funding and welcomed our fifth cohort to campus, with funding to support ~32 additional students through 2026. University of Washington Tacoma is an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI), and we serve a high proportion of racial minority and first generation college students. Our ACCESS scholars are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics, Environmental Science, Biomedical Sciences, Information Technology, Computer Science and Systems, Computer Engineering and Systems, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Civil Engineering, with Computer Science and Engineering representing over 60% of ACCESS scholars to date. First-time college students and first-year transfer students receive full scholarships for their first two years, and partial scholarships for their third and fourth years. The project includes an optional Early Fall Math course to enhance entry into STEM majors, and participants are able to engage in a Research Experience or project-based Introduction to Engineering course in their first year. Coupled with individual faculty mentoring and an on-campus STEM living learning community, the quarterly Success in STEM seminar course helps scholars form a cohesive community through group mentoring, as well as develop a sense of belonging, identity, and empowerment to transform the culture of STEM. This program is distinguished by its focus on pre-STEM majors in their first and second years on campus, and includes mentor training for ~30-40 faculty in teaching and mentoring diverse student populations, thus impacting all students in our majors. Our goal was to evaluate the effectiveness of a program that focuses on the first two years of college and provides financial support, courses to introduce students to research and project-based engineering, and intensive mentoring in increasing retention and academic success for Computer Science and Engineering (CS+E) students, and whether this program helps to close equity gaps for CS+E students who are low socioeconomic status (SES), underrepresented minorities (URMs), female, and/or first generation in college (First Gen) students. We compared our student scholars to a comparison group of students who met eligibility requirements but did not participate in the program. Program scholars had higher first and second year retention, and had significantly higher GPAs. The pandemic resulted in significant social, emotional, and economic stresses for our program scholars, which may have heightened the impact of the ACCESS in STEM program. 

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