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West Virginia University (WVU) is a large R1 land grant institution with a multitude of STEM majors that include students from underrepresented demographics (e.g., rural, low-income/Pell grant eligible, first-generation, Hispanic, African American). Though first- and second-year instructors of STEM classes are expert teachers within their respective disciplines, the large enrollment nature of these classes limits ongoing career mentoring between instructors and their students. Likewise, STEM students are supported by dedicated disciplinary advisors, but these advisors meet with large numbers of advisees (40+) and may need to limit their discussions to academic scheduling and financial aid. To broaden connections between STEM students and faculty/staff and to provide ongoing career mentoring which in turn promotes STEM belonging (fit), career readiness, and persistence, a series of emails detailing STEM-focused opportunities of potential interest were sent to select underrepresented STEM students during each academic semester from fall 2022 to spring 2025. Opportunities include listings of paid summer undergraduate research at national labs and institutions and abstract submissions for institutional, statewide and national symposia. At several time points, a survey was sent to collect information from email recipients on their self-reported impressions and usefulness of the biweekly emails. The nature of this change work was captured by a Plan-Do-Study-Act. Its progression from basic to professional formatting will be discussed along with aggregate responses from the survey. 

Prompting students to practice metacognition, and encouraging the growth of metacognitive strategies improves student success in chemistry coursework. In this study, students were encouraged to submit weekly metacognitive reports providing (i) their time devoted to the course, including hours devoted to out-of-class additional study, and (ii) detailed summaries of additional study activities. This study was administered to students in two different courses, introductory chemistry and general chemistry I. Introductory chemistry students submitted 1,513 metacognitive reports with self-reported overall means of 2.81 hour per week devoted to attending lecture, 4.75 hours per week engaged in additional study, and 7.56 hours per week devoted to the course overall. Weekly patterns indicate that students’ additional study was focused on days of the week that preceded formal assessments. Our expectation was that general chemistry I students would report more time devoted to additional study outside of class than introductory chemistry students because of the preparatory nature of the course. General chemistry I students submitted 3,551 weekly metacognitive reports with self-reported overall means of 2.83 hours per week devoted to attending lecture, 4.83 hours per week engaged in additional study, and 7.66 hours per week devoted to the course overall. We will discuss the seeming equivalence of time spent on out-of-class additional study for the two populations of students. In addition, we will present qualitative analysis of students’ out-of-class study strategies, including classification of study strategies as deep or surface-level. This work is partially supported by the NSF-funded First2 Network. 

Timely, formative feedback is important for instructors and students. In this project, “embedded students” provided instructors with formative feedback through anonymized reports. Students enrolled in preparatory chemistry course sections in fall 2022 self-selected to submit reports documenting their ongoing experiences in learning chemistry content. Embedded students journaled about (i) hours devoted to the course; (ii) topic-specific content mastery, comfort, and confusion; and (iii) instructor pedagogy. An average of 108 reports per week were anonymized and shared with instructors. Instructor effort was limited to agreeing to receive the weekly reports, look them over, and potentially use them to inform upcoming teaching. Embedded students benefited by thinking about their learning in the class (metacognition) and focusing their learning for the upcoming week. Overall, 300 distinct students submitted 1,513 weekly reports, with overall means of 2.81 hours per week of self-reported time devoted to attending lecture, 4.75 hours per week of self-reported time engaged in additional study, and 7.56 hours per week of self-reported total time devoted to the course. Instructors reported reading over 87% of the reports and using feedback to make an average of 4.6 instructional adjustments ranging from working additional practice problems on difficult concepts, providing answer keys to extra problems, implementing problem-solving/review days, and reviewing difficult material or content from earlier in the course. Instructors indicated that the weekly reports contributed to “instructor beneficence”. Students “felt heard” especially when instructors explicitly and constructively addressed comments from the weekly reports. This work is partially supported by the NSF-funded First2 Network. 

In rural West Virginia, the First2 Network aims to improve STEM persistence by including students in creating solutions to STEM attrition. A research program for rising first-year students in STEM majors is discussed here. The authors assessed students’ STEM education and career plans, identity, efficacy, and sense of school of belonging before and after the program. Students’ STEM identity, efficacy, and school belonging improved after participation.