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The Urban STEM Collaboratory is a five-year project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that addresses challenges to student success in STEM disciplines through a multi-institutional collaboration via the University of Memphis (UofM), University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver), and Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Study groups, tutoring, peer and faculty mentoring, and career exploration programs are being used across the three campuses to increase the participants’ commitment to a STEM field. Innovative features from Course Networking (CN) software are being deployed to provide scholars with evidence of their learning journey while expanding a meaningful academic cloud-based social network. This paper extends a previous introductory ASEE conference paper titled: “Launching the Urban STEM Collaboratory,” (Goodman et al., 2020), which outlined the initial efforts of the tri-campus collaboration. The purpose of the present paper is to summarize the impact of the project, including data analysis of effectiveness, for Year 1: 2019-2020 and Year 2: 2020-2021. Although still in progress, with the longitudinal efficacy of several of the project’s components undetermined, the project’s organizational structure, activities, and findings to date should be of value to others conducting or proposing projects with similar goals. 

The Urban STEM Collaboratory is a five-year project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that addresses challenges to student success in STEM disciplines through a multi-institutional collaboration via the University of Memphis (UofM), University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver), and Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Study groups, tutoring, peer and faculty mentoring, and career exploration programs are being used across the three campuses to increase the participants’ commitment to a STEM field. Innovative features from Course Networking (CN) software are being deployed to provide scholars with evidence of their learning journey while expanding a meaningful academic cloud-based social network. This paper extends a previous introductory ASEE conference paper titled: “Launching the Urban STEM Collaboratory,” (Goodman et al., 2020), which outlined the initial efforts of the tri-campus collaboration. The purpose of the present paper is to summarize the impact of the project, including data analysis of effectiveness, for Year 1: 2019-2020 and Year 2: 2020-2021. Although still in progress, with the longitudinal efficacy of several of the project’s components undetermined, the project’s organizational structure, activities, and findings to date should be of value to others conducting or proposing projects with similar goals. 

Launched three years ago, the Urban STEM Collaboratory is a an NSF-funded S-STEM program at three public urban research universities. With the first student scholarships awarded in Fall 2019, each campus has observed positive student outcomes even despite the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goals of the program include: to award scholarships to academically talented and financially needy undergraduate mathematical science and engineering majors; to implement student activities and supports designed to increase student success, attitudes, workforce readiness, and STEM self-efficacy; and to ensure substantial student participation in project activities through a special Badge system incentivizing participation. While the three campuses shared some aspects of the program, each campus also had unique aspects. Among the more notable campus-specific aspects of the Urban STEM Collaboratory are the use of peer-led team learning (PLTL) at one campus, a STEM ambassador program at another campus, and a robust layered peer mentorship program at the other campus. Additionally, each campus funds students for different periods of time (2 years, 3 years, or 4 years), resulting in varying student cohort sizes among campuses. Despite these unique aspects, each campus has experienced program success as measured through quantitative and qualitative student outcomes. Further, program participants (both students and faculty) from across all three campuses engage with each other regularly using virtual online platforms, creating a unique cross-campus community. This poster will report on the current state of the Urban STEM Collaboratory, including findings from all three campuses from the first three years of the S-STEM grant.