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1. Lessons Learned in an S-STEM Program: How to Improve Recruitment and Cohort Building

   Gartner, Jacqueline; Miller, Michele; Rynearson, Anastasia (July 2021, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   null (Ed.)

   A small liberal arts university in the south received an S-STEM grant in 2018 focused on the School of Engineering. Important factors in the program's success are applicant recruitment and cohort building. Our recruiting efforts targeted at-risk students who entered the University with less math preparation. In the first year, we met our goals for recruitment in terms of overall applicant numbers but not in terms of the number of at-risk students. In the second year, we had fewer overall applicants, but the proportion that were at-risk was higher. In the area of cohort building, feedback from the scholarship recipients indicated our programming did not build community or provide opportunities for them to meet students in the other years. In that first year, the project team organized and led professional development and social events. The social events had little structure, and attendance was poor. In the second year, we hired a consultant to provide sessions for students on topics such as value identification, gratitude, and mindfulness. The sessions had positive student feedback. In addition to providing professional development skills, the interactivity of the sessions helped build a stronger cohort. This paper reviews the lessons learned from the first two years and reports on the results of the third-year program implementation. 

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2. Board 33: The SEECRS Scholar Academy at Whatcom Community College: An S-STEM Scholarship Program

   Vannelli, T. A.; Davishahl, E.; Babcock, J. M.; Hanley, D.; Harri, E. (June 2018, ASEE annual conference & exposition proceedings)

   The STEM Excellence through Engagement in Collaboration, Research, and Scholarship (SEECRS) project at Whatcom Community College is a five-year program aiming to support academically talented students with demonstrated financial need in biology, chemistry, geology, computer science, engineering, and physics. This project is funded by an NSF S-STEM (Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) grant awarded in January 2017. Through an inclusive and long-range effort, the college identified a strong need for financial and comprehensive supports for STEM students. This project will offer financial, academic, and professional support to three two-year cohorts of students. The SEECRS project aims to utilize a STEM-specific guided pathways approach to strengthen recruitment, retention, and matriculation of STEM students at the community college level. Scholarship recipients will be supported through participation in the SEECRS Scholars Academy, a multi-pronged approach to student support combining elements of community building, faculty mentorship, targeted advising activities, authentic science practice, and social activities. Students are introduced to disciplines of interest through opportunities to engage in course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in Biology, Chemistry and Engineering courses, funded summer research opportunities, and seminars presented by STEM professionals. Communities of practice will be nurtured through the introduction of cohort building and faculty mentorship. Cohort development starts with a required two-credit course for all scholars that emphasizes STEM identity development, specifically focusing on identifying and coping with the ways non-dominant individuals (racial/ethnic minorities, non-male gender, lower socioeconomic status, first-generation, 2-year community college vs. 4-year institutions) are made to feel as outsiders in STEM. Each SEECRS scholar is paired with a faculty mentor who engages in ongoing mentor training. The project evaluation will determine the efficacy of the project activities in achieving their intended outcomes. Specifically, we will collect data to answer the research question: To what extent can a guided pathways approach provide a coordinated and supported STEM experience at Whatcom Community College that: (1) increases student success, and (2) positively shifts students’ STEM self-identity? The evaluation will employ a quasi-experimental research design, specifically a pretest-posttest design with a matched comparison group. Our first cohort of 14 students was selected over two application rounds (winter and summer 2017). We awarded ten full scholarships and four half-scholarships based on financial need data. Cohort demographics of note compared to institutional percentages are: females (64% vs. 57%), Hispanic (14% vs. 17%), African American (7% vs. 2%), white (79% vs. 66%), first generation college bound (43% vs. 37%). The cohort is comprised of six students interested in engineering, six in biology, and one each in geology and environmental sciences. With increased communication between the project team, our Financial Aid office, Entry and Advising, high school outreach, and the Title III grant-funded Achieve, Inspire, Motivate (AIM) Program, as well as a longer advertising time, we anticipate significantly enhancing our applicant pool for the next cohort. The results and lessons learned from our first year of implementation will be presented. 

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3. Board 33: The SEECRS Scholar Academy at Whatcom Community College: An S-STEM Scholarship Program

   Vannelli, T; Davishahl, E; Babcock, M; Hanley, D; Harri, E. (June 2018, ASEE Peer)

   The STEM Excellence through Engagement in Collaboration, Research, and Scholarship (SEECRS) project at Whatcom Community College is a five-year program aiming to support academically talented students with demonstrated financial need in biology, chemistry, geology, computer science, engineering, and physics. This project is funded by an NSF S-STEM (Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) grant awarded in January 2017. Through an inclusive and long-range effort, the college identified a strong need for financial and comprehensive supports for STEM students. This project will offer financial, academic, and professional support to three two-year cohorts of students. The SEECRS project aims to utilize a STEM-specific guided pathways approach to strengthen recruitment, retention, and matriculation of STEM students at the community college level. Scholarship recipients will be supported through participation in the SEECRS Scholars Academy, a multi-pronged approach to student support combining elements of community building, faculty mentorship, targeted advising activities, authentic science practice, and social activities. Students are introduced to disciplines of interest through opportunities to engage in course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in Biology, Chemistry and Engineering courses, funded summer research opportunities, and seminars presented by STEM professionals. Communities of practice will be nurtured through the introduction of cohort building and faculty mentorship. Cohort development starts with a required two-credit course for all scholars that emphasizes STEM identity development, specifically focusing on identifying and coping with the ways non-dominant individuals (racial/ethnic minorities, non-male gender, lower socioeconomic status, first-generation, 2-year community college vs. 4-year institutions) are made to feel as outsiders in STEM. Each SEECRS scholar is paired with a faculty mentor who engages in ongoing mentor training. The project evaluation will determine the efficacy of the project activities in achieving their intended outcomes. Specifically, we will collect data to answer the research question: To what extent can a guided pathways approach provide a coordinated and supported STEM experience at Whatcom Community College that: (1) increases student success, and (2) positively shifts students’ STEM self-identity? The evaluation will employ a quasi-experimental research design, specifically a pretest-posttest design with a matched comparison group. Our first cohort of 14 students was selected over two application rounds (winter and summer 2017). We awarded ten full scholarships and four half-scholarships based on financial need data. Cohort demographics of note compared to institutional percentages are: females (64% vs. 57%), Hispanic (14% vs. 17%), African American (7% vs. 2%), white (79% vs. 66%), first generation college bound (43% vs. 37%). The cohort is comprised of six students interested in engineering, six in biology, and one each in geology and environmental sciences. With increased communication between the project team, our Financial Aid office, Entry and Advising, high school outreach, and the Title III grant-funded Achieve, Inspire, Motivate (AIM) Program, as well as a longer advertising time, we anticipate significantly enhancing our applicant pool for the next cohort. The results and lessons learned from our first year of implementation will be presented. 

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4. The Agile Academic Enterprise

   Wilson, T. A.; Towhidnejad, M.; Pembridge, J. J.; Bowen, E. E.; Ochoa, O.; Castro, C. A. (January 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   What might it mean to be an agile academic department? An agile college? An agile university? “Agile”, as used here, refers to practices and frameworks in software development and deployment, such as Scrum, Extreme Programming, and Crystal Clear. The Agile movement’s founding documents, the Agile Manifesto and its accompanying Agile Principles [https://agilemanifesto.org/], were published by leading software engineering researchers in February of 2001. The Manifesto staked out distinction with the prevailing software development approach at the time, called planned development and otherwise known as waterfall. The Agile Manifesto states, "We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan "That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.” Since the Manifesto’s publication, Agile use has expanded from its then primarily application in software development into a wide range of activities, from rocket motors (Space X), to race car development (Wikispeed), to finance (World Bank), to human resources (ING). Denning postulates Three Laws of the Agile Mindset: (1) The Law of the Small Team, in which small cross-functions teams work in short iterations receiving regular customer feedback; (2) The Law of the Customer, in which delighting the customer is taken as the ultimate purpose for any enterprise; and (3) The Law of the Network, in which networks of small teams act, having trust in the competency of each other, act like small teams in themselves [The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done. AMACOM, 2018]. Academic enterprises have unique attributes — recurring, months long, instructional terms; “customers” (students) whose short-term dissatisfaction can be part of the path to long-term success; industrial stakeholders who influence program direction and focus to satisfy hiring needs; generation of new knowledge, often with financial support from government agencies and industry; service to the profession and to our institutions. Using Denning’s Laws as a framing, we present possible approaches to employing agile within an academic department and discuss potential expansion of such to the level of a college and even an entire university. 

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5. Board 185: “Someone has Invested in Me to Do This": Supporting Low-Income Students to Persist in STEM Through a NSF S-STEM Grant

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46749  

   Funk, Rachel; Lewis, Jim; Pai, Leilani; Cristobal, Johan Benedict; Rader, Brittany (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   Funded by the National Science Foundation, the S-STEM project, STEM CONNECT (Award No. 1930211) involves a partnership among three institutions (including one bachelor’s degree-awarding and two associate’s degree-awarding institutions) aimed at supporting cohorts of low-income, high achieving students (“Scholars”) to succeed in obtaining a STEM degree that emphasizes computer science and mathematics. The project is particularly interested in supporting women, underrepresented minorities, first generation students, transfer students, and rural students. The project uses a variety of mechanisms to support Scholars, including providing academic support through tutoring, connecting Scholars with faculty and peer mentors, developing community-building activities (e.g., Puzzle Hunts, documentary viewings), and providing career development activities (e.g., tours of local engineering and technology businesses). In this poster session, we present an analysis of data on students’ academic progress (e.g., grades, graduation rates) and STEM work experiences (e.g., internships, research opportunities) as well as a qualitative analysis of student interview data to describe to what extent and how project structures and activities have helped Scholars to persist in their selected STEM majors and STEM career pathways. Specifically, we conducted a qualitative thematic analysis of data from student focus groups held over a period of three years (three in Spring 2021, nine in Spring 2022, and eight in Spring 2023), during which Scholars were asked to reflect on and evaluate components of the project, as well as interviews with five women Scholars about their experiences. We used theories of capital (e.g., social capital theory, Yosso’s cultural wealth model) to aid in the development of themes. Overall, Scholars valued the extent to which the project invested in their educational and professional success. Major themes highlight the importance of mentors, positioning Scholars as STEM professionals, and academic support structures in increasing Scholars’ sense of belonging and desire to persist in STEM. Mentors were shown to play a critical role in a.) supporting times of transition (e.g., transitioning from applied to proof-based courses, transitioning from small class sizes at a community college to large enrollment courses at a bachelor’s degree-awarding institution) b.) helping Scholars get “a foot in the door” to obtain relevant work experiences and c.) assisting students in navigating academic structures perceived as barriers to their academic pathway. Scholars also valued project opportunities that allowed students to envision themselves as professionals (e.g., through speakers who talked about their professional journey, by interacting with “like-minded peers” that have similar “goals and drives”) and that positioned Scholars as professionals (e.g., by inviting Scholars to serve as panelists at local events, by giving students funding to attend a STEM conference). Further, Scholars appreciated the project’s efforts to enroll scholars in the same sections of courses, as Scholars saw the value in being able to collaborate with peers that they know. Finally, an overarching theme from these data was that project structures and activities were often successful because they built upon the assets (e.g., aspirations) that Scholars brought with them to college. 

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