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This student-led research will assess a weekly lunch that eight faculty mentors implemented to promote student retention for an S-STEM scholarship cohort of approximately twenty engineering students. The faculty mentors hosted the students by providing simple home-cooked meals, which helped reduce food insecurity among the cohort while providing a venue for professional development. These lunches also provided an informal way for the faculty to connect with the students while fostering peer-to-peer relationships. The weekly lunch was initiated in the winter quarter of the first year of study for the participating students. As students moved into their sophomore year and began to enroll in separate, major-specific courses, the lunches helped to preserve previously formed relationships and group identity. While the weekly lunches focused on social interaction and provided a relaxed environment for catching up, each lunch included professional development “nuggets” strategically timed to increase impact. Example activities included the initial introduction of faculty mentors, talks from Ph.D. students, ambassadors from student organizations, discussions about academic success, interview skills in preparation for upcoming university career fairs, and research opportunities for undergraduates. This paper quantifies the impact of the lunches on professional development, group identity and belonging, connections with faculty mentors, and academic success using a 25-question survey. The survey includes Likert scale questions, yes/no/unsure questions, and open-ended discussion questions. While survey results show that students enjoy the lunches and believe the social and professional support activities are beneficial, the results are mixed on whether or not the lunches play a role in their decision to remain in an engineering major.
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To Pursue or Not to Pursue STEM? Faculty Behavior Enhances Student Involvement in STEM Roles by Signaling Role-Specific Support
Four studies examine the faculty–student relationship as a mechanism through which students ascertain their place in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Studies 1 and 2 use experimental methods to demonstrate STEM faculty who behave communally, relative to independently, increase undergraduates’ belonging and interest in STEM roles through anticipation of greater role-specific support (i.e., support that emphasizes guiding students through structures and activities of field-specific roles). Study 3 then examined the consequences of role-specific support for undergraduates’ belonging and interest in STEM. Students anticipated more belonging and interest in STEM roles when faculty provided high levels of role-specific support. Finally, STEM doctoral students’ perception of role-specific support from faculty related to their belonging and future identification in STEM fields (Study 4). Taken together, these studies demonstrate the importance of students’ construals of role-specific support from faculty, and how faculty behavior signals role-specific support, with benefits for student involvement in STEM.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1943041
- PAR ID:
- 10315329
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Social Psychological and Personality Science
- ISSN:
- 1948-5506
- 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
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211035003
