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The SUCCESS project’s main goal is to recruit, retain, and graduate low-income STEM students at WVU Tech and this abstract contains updates for Year 2. The recruitment activities started in early 2021 and continued during the summer of 2021 to form Cohort 1 and during the summer of 2022 to form Cohort 2. Currently, there are 19 scholars/students in the program. 12 new students (10 Computer Science (CS) and 2 Information Systems (IS) majors) were accepted in Fall 2022 and these 12 students are forming Cohort 2. 6 students were accepted into Electrical Engineering (EE) (4), Computer Engineering (CpE) (1), and CS (1) programs in Fall 2021. 2 EE and 1 CS students entered the program in Spring 2022. Two students (both EEs) stopped out of school for mainly their personal issues. These 7 students are forming Cohort 1. So far, scholars have completed at least one entrepreneurship course, attended career fairs, met with industry mentors, and attended senior design presentation events. Some of the scholars work with faculty on research projects. Students are actively engaging with the IEEE/ACM student branches and some of the scholars took leadership positions in these organizations. The SUCCESS team is regularly collecting and analyzing feedback from scholars to ensure that the necessary improvements are implemented. Every semester, scholars’ feedback is collected through pre-, mid-, and post-surveys. These surveys provide insights into scholars’ course/program performance, career updates, and also the level of persistence toward their program of study and entrepreneurship minor. This project is funded by NSF DUE S-STEM Program from 2021-2026.
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An Integrated Program for Recruitment, Retention, and Graduation of Academically Talented Low-Income Engineering Students
This paper provides detailed information for a poster that will be presented in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Grantees Poster Session during the 2020 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. The poster describes the progress and the state of an NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (S-STEM) project. The objectives of this project are to 1) enhance student learning by providing access to extra- and co-curricular experiences, 2) create a positive student experience through mentorship, and 3) ensure successful student placement in the STEM workforce or graduate school. S-STEM Scholars supported by this program receive financial, academic, professional, and social development via various evidence-based activities integrated throughout their four-year undergraduate degrees beginning during the summer prior to starting at the University. The paper describes the characteristics (demographics, high school GPA, ACT/SAT scores, etc.) of the Scholars supported by the S-STEM grant. The paper also provides information about the completed tasks of the project to date. The completed tasks include a system for recruiting academically talented and economically disadvantaged students, a Summer Bridge Program (SBP), a first semester introductory engineering course, and a system to recruit and maintain faculty mentors. The ongoing tasks include the execution of a service learning project course and a system for recruiting industry mentors. This paper reports detailed assessment and evaluation data about different project tasks and the academic success metrics of the Scholars. It also lists a set of recommendations based on the lessons learned in this S-STEM project.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1644182
- PAR ID:
- 10251833
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34133
