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The University of Akron has had two National Science Foundation (NSF) funded science, technology, engineering and mathematics scholarship (S-STEM) programs. The cohort of the first S-STEM program (2010-2015) were students that were directly admitted to their selected discipline’s department. The current NSF S-STEM cohort (2015-2020) is a mix of students who were either directly admitted to their major or college-ready students. The university classifies college-ready students as those who are ready for college but lack either a requisite high school GPA, ACT score or completion of a high school science or math course. Each program spanned five years with science disciplines typically graduating in four years and engineering students that participated in co-operative education graduating in five years. The final year of each S- STEM was used to provide peer mentoring in a pseudo-formal environment. In each, seniors who had already participated in the S-STEM program for four years mentored new freshmen for one year. This paper will describe demographics of each S-STEM cohort, the activities used during the peer mentoring, observable differences between direct admit and college-ready freshmen with respect to peer mentoring, and possible peer mentoring activities that can be implemented at other institutions.
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At-Risk Freshmen Student Retention After STEM Intervention
Background: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) areas are one of the fastest-growing majors in the nation. Engineering is projected to add the second largest number of new jobs from 2016 to 2026 with 140,000 new jobs (Torpey, 2018).According to the National Center for Education Statistics despite all the research done throughout decades to improve the issue of retention in STEM areas about half of the students who pursue a degree in STEM will either leave or change majors. Purpose: This study aimed to sample at-risk college freshmen students from the College of Engineering & Computer Science, to describe and explain the association between retention after the first year of at-risk college freshmen students in a STEM program and completion of a STEM intervention, to identify the reasons STEM students decided to stay in the program after completing a STEM intervention, and to identify how to improve the STEM intervention. Method: A Chi-square test of independence was used to find if there was an association between the completion of a STEM intervention and the retention rate of at-risk freshmen students and focus group interviews. Results & Conclusions: The quantitative analysis, a test of independence X2 (chi-square)found no statistically significant association between STEM intervention completion and retention. The qualitative analysis provided five themes describing the students’ STEM intervention experience was also provided: learning activities and processes, mentorship, sense of belonging, and transitioning from high school to college. Key Words: STEM, College, Intervention, Student Progress
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- Award ID(s):
- 2217780
- PAR ID:
- 10544837
- Publisher / Repository:
- Zenodo
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Studies
- ISSN:
- 2582-3647
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Right(s):
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10876017
