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1. Enhancing the Success of Minority STEM Students by Providing Financial, Academic, Social, and Cultural Capital

   Enriquez, A. G.; Lipe, C. B.; Price, B. (June 2017, ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   Research has shown that student achievement is influenced by their access to, or possession of, various forms of capital. These forms of capital include financial capital, academic capital (prior academic preparation and access to academic support services), cultural capital (the attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors related to education which students are exposed to by members of their family or community), and social capital (the resources students have access to as a result of being members of groups or networks). For community college students, many with high financial need and the first in their families to go to college (especially those from underrepresented minority groups), developing programs to increase access to these various forms of capital is critical to their success. This paper describes how a small federally designated Hispanic-serving community college has developed 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. Developed through a National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) grant, the program involves a collaboration among STEM faculty, college staff, administrators, student organizations, and partners in industry, four-year institutions, local high schools, and professional organizations. In addition to providing financial support through the scholarships, student access to academic capital is increased through an intensive math review program, tutoring, study groups, supplemental instruction, and research internship opportunities. Access to cultural and social capital is increased by providing scholars with faculty mentors; engaging students with STEM faculty, university researchers, and industry professionals through field trips, summer internships, professional organizations, and student clubs; supporting student and faculty participation at professional conferences, and providing opportunities for students and their families to interact with faculty and staff. The paper details the development of the program, and its impact over the last five years on enhancing the success of STEM students as determined from data on student participation in various program activities, student attitudinal and self-efficacy surveys, and academic performance including persistence, retention, transfer and graduation. 

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2. Improving STEM Education for Lower-division College Students at HSI by Utilizing Relevant Sociocultural and Academic Experiences: First-year Results from ASSURE-US Project

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34795  

   Huang, Jidong; Kurwadkar, Sudarshan; Bein, Doina; Bai, Yu; Mayoral, Salvador (June 2020, 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   Despite national efforts in increasing representation of minority students in STEM disciplines, disparities prevail. Hispanics account for 17.4% of the U.S. population, and nearly 20% of the youth population (21 years and below) in the U.S. is Hispanic, yet they account for just 7% of the STEM workforce. To tackle these challenges, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has granted a 5-year project – ASSURE-US, that seeks to improve undergraduate education in Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) at California State University, Fullerton. The project seeks to advance student success during the first two years of college for ECS students. Towards that goal, the project incorporates a very diverse set of approaches, such as socio-cultural and academic interventions. Multiple strategies including developing early intervention strategies in gateway STEM courses, creating a nurturing faculty-student interaction and collaborative learning environment, providing relevant, contextual-based learning experiences, integrating project-based learning with engineering design in lower-division courses, exposing lower-division students to research to sustain student interests, and helping students develop career-readiness skills. The project also seeks to develop an understanding of the personal, social, cognitive, and contextual factors contributing to student persistence in STEM learning that can be used by STEM faculty to improve their pedagogical and student-interaction approaches. This paper summarizes the major approaches the ASSURE-US project plans to implement to reduce the achievement gap and motivate ECS students to remain in the program. Preliminary findings from the first-year implementation of the project including pre- and post- data were collected and analyzed from about one hundred freshmen and sophomore ECS students regarding their academic experience in lower-division classes and their feedback for various social support events held by the ASSURE-US project during the academic year 2018-19. The preliminary results obtained during the first year of ASSURE-US project suggests that among the different ASSURE-US activities implemented in the first year, both the informal faculty-student interactions and summer research experiences helped students commit more to their major during their lower-division years. The pre-post surveys also show improvements in terms of awareness among ASSURE-US students for obtaining academic support services, understanding career options and pathways, and obtaining personal counseling services. 

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3. The Role of Contextual Variables and Structural Diversity on College Students’ Engineering Self-Efficacy

   https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14070564  

   Lee, Bo Hyun; Hu, Xiaotian; Flores, Lisa Y; Navarro, Rachel L (July 2024, Behavioral Sciences)

   Structural diversity is defined as the numerical representation of diverse racial/ethnic student groups on campus as one way of exposing students to diversity in higher education. The current study implemented the concept of structural diversity on faculty in higher education, given the significant and unique roles in STEM education. We integrated the proportion of URM faculty within the College of Engineering as a moderating variable in the social cognitive career theory (SCCT) model. With a sample of 254 diverse engineering students from six universities, the results indicated that both perceived engineering barriers and perceived engineering supports significantly related to perceived self-efficacy even after controlling for the effects of the other. Perceived engineering supports mediated the effects of engineering barriers on self-efficacy. Moreover, a moderated mediation effect by the proportion of URM faculty was observed, showing that when the proportion of URM faculty reached a certain level, high levels of perceived engineering barriers had no effect on increasing perceived engineering supports. Implications for fostering career development in engineering with a systematic-tailored approach are discussed. 

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4. An Integrated Supplemental Program to Enhance the First-year Engineering Experience

   Brown, Ordel; Morris, Melissa; Hensel, Robin; Dygert, Joseph (June 2018, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Student retention in STEM disciplines, especially engineering, continues to be a challenge for higher education institutions. Poor retention rates have been attributed to academic and institutional isolation, exclusion from social and professional networks, unsupportive peer and family communities, a lack of knowledge about the academic community and financial obstacles. The importance of retention in engineering has attracted increasing attention from many stakeholders in academia including faculty, staff, administrators and students. Its significance goes beyond the benefits for the academic institutions to encompass national concerns. At a large land-grant university in the mid-Atlantic region, between 2003 and 2012, an average thirty percent of first-year engineering students left engineering before their second year. A three-year study (2007-2010) done to gain insight into this attrition rate, showed that students mainly left because of low self-efficacy, lack of interest in and knowledge about engineering and the institution, disconnection from the engineering profession and academic difficulty. To address these issues, an integrated supplemental program was implemented in the first-year engineering program. Students must be in first-time, first-year standing to enroll in the program, which includes a professional development and academic success course beginning with a pre-fall bridge component. The program also provides direct pathways to academic enrichment activities such as undergraduate research. It helps students to develop strategies for academic success, explore engineering careers and start building a professional network through a multi-level peer, faculty and alumni mentoring system. Students are systematically and deliberately immersed in curricular and co-curricular activities with their peer, faculty and alumni mentors. The program was piloted with a NASA Space Grant in 2012 and funded by NSF in 2016. The goal of this evidence-based practice paper is to share the challenges, logistics and results of the implementation of this program in our standard first-year engineering experience. 

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5. Theory to Practice: Professional Development for Culturally Responsive Technician Education

   Pickering, C. (July 2022, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   The HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution) ATE (Advanced Technological Education) Hub 2 is a three-year collaborative research project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that continues the partnership between two successful programs and involves a third partner in piloting professional development that draws upon findings from the initial program. The goal of HSI ATE Hub 2 is to improve outcomes for Latinx students in technician education programs through design, development, pilot delivery, and dissemination of a 3-tier professional development (PD) model for culturally responsive technician education at 2-year Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). The project seeks to do this by developing the awareness and ability of faculty to appreciate, engage, and affirm the unique cultural identities of the students in their classes and use this connection to deepen students’ belonging and emerging identities as STEM learners and future STEM technicians. This paper shares the research foundations shaping this approach and the methods by which faculty professional development is being provided to develop this important and sensitive instructional capability in participating faculty. The tiered PD model features a scaffolded series of reflective and activity-oriented modules to incrementally enrich the instructional practices and mindset of HSI STEM educators and strengthen their repertoire of strategies for engaging culturally diverse students. Scaffolding that translates culturally responsive theory to practice spans each of the four distinct topic modules in each tier. Each topic module in a tier then scaffolds to a more advanced topic module in the next tier. Tier 1, Bienvenidos, welcomes HSI STEM educators who recognize the need to better serve their Latinx students, and want guidance for small practical activities to try with their students. Tier 2, Transformation through Action, immerses HSI STEM educators in additional activities that bring culturally responsive practices into their technician training while building capacity to collect evidence about impacts and outcomes for students. Tier 3, Engaging Community, strengthens leadership as HSI STEM educators disseminate results from activities completed in Tiers 1 and 2 at conferences that attract technician educators. Sharing the evidence-based practices and their outcomes contributes to achieving broader impacts in the Advanced Technological Education or ATE Community of NSF grantees. Westchester Community College (WCC), the first 2-year HSI in the State University of New York (SUNY) 64 campus system, is piloting the 3-tier PD model using virtual learning methods mastered through previous NSF ATE work and the COVID-19 context. During the pilot, over 20 WCC technician educators in three cohorts will develop leadership skills and practice culturally responsive methods. The pilot will build capacity within WCC STEM technician programs to better support the diversity of students, industry demand for a diverse workforce, and WCC’s capacity for future development of technician education programs. This first paper in a three part series describes the program goals and objectives, the 3-Tier PD model, and reports initial results for Cohort A’s engagement in the first three modules of Tier 1. 

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