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1. Board 317: Institutional Practices to Close the Equity Gap

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46896  

   Cline, EC; Dillon, Heather; Sesko, Amanda; Nahmani, Marc; Kmail, Zaher; Dinglasan-Panlilio, Joyce; Lee, Seung-Jin; Cilli-Turner, Emily; Björling, Elin (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   The S-STEM supported program “Achieving Change in our Communities for Equity and Student Success” (ACCESS) in STEM started at the University of Washington Tacoma in 2018 and has supported 108 students over 6 cohorts. University of Washington Tacoma has been designated an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI) due to our high proportion of racial minority and first generation college students. The program is multidisciplinary across STEM majors including 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, IT and Engineering representing 65% of ACCESS scholars to date. Program scholars receive full scholarships for their first two years, and partial scholarships for their third and fourth years. We provide a summer bridge precalculus or research experience course, and project-based Introduction to Engineering or Introduction to Research courses in students’ first year. Individual faculty mentoring, an on-campus STEM living learning community,and quarterly Success in STEM seminar courses help scholars form a cohesive community through group mentoring, to promote a sense of belonging, identity, and empowerment in the STEM community. Our S-STEM program is distinctive in focusing on pre-STEM majors in their first and second years on campus to facilitate the entry into STEM majors, and we provide 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 how retention and academic success of our program scholars was impacted by the program, and whether this program helps to close equity gaps for students who identify as low socioeconomic status, underrepresented minorities, women or non-binary, or first generation in college . We also evaluated the impact of the program for students before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic. We compared our program scholars to a comparison group of students who met eligibility requirements but did not participate in the program. Overall, program scholars had higher first and second year retention, and significantly higher GPAs, particularly for individuals belonging to groups that are historically underrepresented in STEM. Retention was markedly higher for program scholars during the pandemic, suggesting that the program may have been particularly impactful for students as they endured the emotional and financial stresses of the pandemic. 

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2. Promoting Academic Success of Economically Disadvantaged, STEM-Interested, First- and Second-Year Undergraduate Students via the ACCESS in STEM Program at University of Washington Tacoma

   Cline, E.T. (July 2021, Understanding Interventions Journal)

   We are facing a national challenge of low retention rates for STEM-interested students. At the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT), a public, predominantly undergraduate, minority-serving institution (Asian-American, Native American, Pacific Islander, AANAPISI), only 28% of high achieving (high school GPA>3.0), STEM-interested at entry, Pell-eligible, first-time-in-college (FTIC) students undergraduates have entered a STEM major by the beginning of their 2nd yr, and the proportion is significantly lower for PEERs (persons excluded from STEM due to ethnicity or race [Asai, 2020]) at only 16%, representing a substantial equity gap. To address this problem, we developed the Achieving Change in our Communities for Equity and Student Success (ACCESS) in STEM Program. Supported by an NSF S-STEM grant since 2018, the program supports low-income, STEM-interested students by providing focused mentoring, a living learning community, a course-based research experience in their first year, and scholarships in their first two years of college. Based on the Student Persistence model of Graham et al. (2013), we hypothesized that these interventions would increase retention, academic performance, and progress into and through STEM majors. Our approach builds upon existing research demonstrating the importance of early research experiences (Thiry et al., 2012) and intensive mentoring and community building, particularly in the context of AANAPISI institutions (Nguyen et al., 2018). 

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3. Using Financial Support to Create a Learning Community Among Diverse Community College STEM Students

   Enriquez, A. G.; Lipe, C. B. (June 2012, ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   Although many California Community College students from underrepresented groups enter college with high levels of interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the majority of them drop out or change majors even before taking transfer-level courses due to a variety of reasons including financial difficulties, inadequate academic preparation, lack of family support, poor study skills, and inadequate or ineffective academic advising and mentoring. In 2009, Cañada College, a federally designated Hispanic-serving institution in the San Francisco Bay Area, received a National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) grant to develop a scholarship program for financially needy community college students intending to transfer to a four-year institution to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field. In collaboration with the College’s Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA) program – an academic, personal, and professional support structure has been designed and implemented to maximize the likelihood of success of these students. This support structure aims to create a learning community among the scholars through a combination of academic counseling and mentoring, personal enrichment and professional development opportunities, and strong academic support services. This paper describes how faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, student organizations, and partners in industry, four-year institutions, and professional organizations can be involved in creating an academic infrastructure that promotes academic excellence, leadership skills, and personal and professional growth among the diversity of financially needy STEM students in a community college. 

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4. Increasing Retention of STEM Students with Financial Need via the NSF S-STEM DESIRE Scholarship Program

   Wright BM; Lee S; Zaromatidis K; Huk O (December 2021, Journal of STEM education)

   College students experiencing financial challenges also face additional social and academic challenges to staying enrolled through graduation. Colleges that have the greatest success in persistence to graduation have combined scholarships with other academic, emotional, and social support. Here, we review previous studies of the relationship between S-STEM programs and college retention. We then discuss interim findings from the Iona College Development of Excellence in Science through Intervention, Resilience, and Enrichment (DESIRE) National Science Foundation (NSF) S-STEM scholarship program. DESIRE provides tuition scholarships and other support to academically talented chemistry and computer science majors with financial need. We gathered students’ perspectives regarding the DESIRE program and what helps them to persist in college, through interviews with DESIRE scholars and qualitative surveys of DESIRE scholars and a comparison group of non-DESIRE students. We discuss implications for S-STEM programs and other initiatives that seek to retain more STEM undergraduate students with financial need. 

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5. Recruiting and Retaining Low-Income Engineering Students Across Four Institutions During a Pandemic: Progress and Lessons Learned from a Track 3 S-STEM Grant

   Castles, R.; Venters, C.; and Goodman, C (June 2022, 2022 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition)

   In January 2020 East Carolina University (ECU) in partnership with Lenoir Community College (LCC), Pitt Community College (PCC), and Wayne Community College (WCC) was awarded an S-STEM Track 3 Grant (Grant number: 1930497). The purpose of this grant was to support low-income students at each partner institution, to research best practices in recruiting and retaining low-income students at both universities and community colleges, and to research how such programs influence the transfer outcomes from two-year to four-year schools. This grant provides scholarship support for two cohorts of students, one starting their engineering studies in Fall 2020 and the other starting their engineering studies in Fall 2021. Each cohort was to be comprised of 40 students including 20 students at ECU and 20 students divided among the three partnering community colleges. In addition to supporting student scholarships, this grant supported the establishment of new student support mechanisms and enhancement of existing support systems on each campus. This project involved the creation of a faculty mentoring program, designing a summer bridge program, establishing a textbook lending library, and enhancing activities for students in a living-learning community, expansion of university tutoring initiatives to allow access for community college students, and promoting a new peer mentoring initiative. The program emphasizes career opportunities including promoting on-campus career fairs, promoting internship and co-op opportunities, and bringing in guest speakers from various industry partners. A goal of the program was to allow community college students to build relationships with university students and faculty so they can more easily assimilate into the student body at the university upon transfer. This paper presents the challenges presented to the project in the first year and the pivoting that occurred due the pandemic. Data is presented regarding recruitment of scholars in both cohorts and retention of scholars from year 1 to year 2. 

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