Recognizing current and future needs for a diverse skilled workforce in mechanical engineering and the rising cost of higher education that acts as a barrier for many talented students with interests in engineering, the NSF funded S-STEM project at a state university focuses resources and research on financial support coupled with curricular and co-curricular activities designed to facilitate student degree attainment, career development, and employability in STEM-related jobs. This program has provided enhanced educational opportunities to more than 90 economically disadvantaged and academically talented undergraduate students in the Mechanical Engineering Department in the past eight years. It is expected that approximately 45 academically talented and financially needy students, including students transferring from community colleges to four-year engineering programs will receive scholarship support in the next 5 years, with an average amount of $6,000 per year for up to four years to earn degrees in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).
Through scholarships and supplemental support services, this program promotes full-time enrollment and will elevate the scholastic achievement of the S-STEM scholars, with a special emphasis on females and/or underrepresented minorities. It will provide a holistic and novel educational experience combining science, engineering, technology and medicine to improve student retention and future career prospects. The project builds on an established partnership between the state university and community colleges to improve and investigate the transfer experience of community college students to four-year programs, student retention at the university, and job placement and pathways to graduate school and employment. A mixed methods quantitative and qualitative research approach will examine the implementation and outcomes of proactive recruitment; selected high impact practices, such as orientation, one-to-one faculty mentoring, peer mentoring, and community building; participation by students in research-focused activities, such as research seminars and undergraduate experiences; and participation by students in career and professional development activities.
In this paper, preliminary data will be presented discussing the attitudes and perceptions of the s-stem scholars and comparing students in scholarly programs and non-programmed situations.
This research was supported by an NSF S-STEM grant (DUE-1742170).
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S-STEM as the Culmination of a Multi-Institutional, Multi-Grant Program for the Success of Underrepresented Students
Although numerous programs exist in many institutions of higher education aimed at helping
students from underrepresented groups achieve their goals of successfully graduating in a
science, technology, mathematics, or engineering (STEM) field and moving on to the next
educational level or a career, few are set up to support students across schools, from their entry
into postsecondary education at the community college through the completion of their fouryear
degree at a university and beyond. Furthermore, few programs are able to offer the full
range of support that has been shown to be optimally effective toward promoting student
success, as in, for example, the Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST) model laid out
by Chubin and Ward (2009). The reason for this is simple: rarely are the funds available from any
given source to allow a program to provide all the supports students need. In this paper, we
provide an example of how this problem was (at least partly) solved by the close interaction of
two Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation and an S-STEM program, working within the
context of other support opportunities at three community colleges and one university in
Northern New Jersey. The programs and the mechanisms through which they support students
are described and preliminary data examining their impacts are presented.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1909824
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10489987
- Publisher / Repository:
- Understanding Interventions, Inc.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Understanding Interventions Journal
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1111-1111
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- ["STEM education","undergraduate education","student support programs","underrepresented\nstudents","multiple interventions"]
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Recognizing current and future needs for a diverse skilled workforce in mechanical engineering and the rising cost of higher education that acts as a barrier for many talented students with interests in engineering, the NSF funded S-STEM project at a state university focuses resources and research on financial support coupled with curricular and co-curricular activities designed to facilitate student degree attainment, career development, and employability in STEM-related jobs. This program has provided enhanced educational opportunities to more than 90 economically disadvantaged and academically talented undergraduate students in the Mechanical Engineering Department in the past eight years. It is expected that approximately 45 academically talented and financially needy students, including students transferring from community colleges to four-year engineering programs will receive scholarship support in the next 5 years, with an average amount of $6,000 per year for up to four years to earn degrees in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Through scholarships and supplemental support services, this program promotes full-time enrollment and will elevate the scholastic achievement of the S-STEM scholars, with a special emphasis on females and/or underrepresented minorities. It will provide a holistic and novel educational experience combining science, engineering, technology and medicine to improve student retention and future career prospects. The project builds on an established partnership between the state university and community colleges to improve and investigate the transfer experience of community college students to four-year programs, student retention at the university, and job placement and pathways to graduate school and employment. A mixed methods quantitative and qualitative research approach will examine the implementation and outcomes of proactive recruitment; selected high impact practices, such as orientation, one-to-one faculty mentoring, peer mentoring, and community building; participation by students in research-focused activities, such as research seminars and undergraduate experiences; and participation by students in career and professional development activities. In this paper, preliminary data will be presented discussing the attitudes and perceptions of the s-stem scholars and comparing students in scholarly programs and non-programmed situations. This research was supported by an NSF S-STEM grant (DUE-1742170).more » « less
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