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This research paper describes a preliminary analysis of panel summaries of proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Scholarships for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program. S-STEM provides awards to institutions to fund scholarships and to implement evidence-based strategies to recruit, retain, and graduate students from low-income backgrounds who have the academic potential to succeed in eligible STEM disciplines. The ultimate goal of the program is to build the US STEM workforce. In 2017, Rice University received funding from NSF to support teams of principal investigators and their co- investigators, who were experts in educational or related research areas, to attend a two-day workshop that was developed to help them prepare more competitive proposals to the S-STEM program. The emphasis was on investigators from predominantly undergraduate institutions, primarily those located in Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) jurisdictions and/or designated as Minority-Serving Institutions. One of the workshop’s aims was to investigate factors that impact the success (or lack thereof) of proposals to the S-STEM program. We began with examining the feedback participants received from review panels on their proposal submissions. In this case study, we compare panel summaries for five S-STEM proposals submitted from five different institutions, exploring the similarities and differences in the overall reviews, as well as the strengths and weaknesses cited for both awarded and declined proposals that were awarded and declined in the context of their alignment with NSF’s merit review criteria. This is submitted for consideration as a traditional paper presentation. 

In this research-based paper, we discuss the development of a measure of Rice University students’ STEM study strategies and then explore the measure’s correlation with several important psychological outcomes in a sample of underprepared first-year STEM students (n=94). STEM attrition remains a pressing concern nationally, particularly for students who took less rigorous STEM courses in high school, a population that disproportionally comprises underrepresented minorities. The authors developed an 11-item measure of STEM-specific study strategies, termed the STEM Study Strategies Questionnaire. We explored STEM-specific identity, self-efficacy, and career aspirations, as well as perceived utility of attaining a STEM degree, using a model based on Eccles and Wigfield’s (2002) expectancy-value framework of achievement. An exploratory factor analysis found a four-factor solution to the newly developed scale: Group Work in STEM, Active STEM Learning, Interactions with STEM Professors, and STEM Exam Familiarity. The authors found significant moderate to strong correlations among all psychological variables, as well as with the Group Work and STEM Exam Familiarity factors. Next steps for this research are to develop further measure items to capture each of the four factors and to conduct confirmatory analyses on different samples of STEM students, both those who are relatively underprepared and appropriately prepared for college STEM coursework. 

This NSF S-STEM Grantee poster examines the results of Rice University's summer science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) bridge program, the Rice Emerging Scholars Program (RESP), on participants' introductory chemistry grades in a quasi-experimental design that compared performance of participants in RESP, a control group with similar preparation as RESP participants, and the remaining students in the class. The outcome of interest was first and second-semester chemistry exam performance. The researchers also examined performance on first-semester exam items that directly tested concepts taught in RESP versus concepts that were not taught during the program, as well as class grade distribution by group for both first and second-semester chemistry. Results showed that engaging in RESP enhanced performance on items that directly assessed content taught in the program but did not significantly improve performance on items not taught in RESP. However, the proportion of students in RESP earning As and Bs was no different from other students in the class during the first semester. Although not all results were significant, trends in the data point to the promise of RESP. Implications for near and far learning transfer as a result of program participation are discussed. 

The current study examines the validity of the RESP diagnostic exam and its predictive validity relative to standardized tests with a sample of students (N = 976) who matriculated into Rice University from 2012 to 2014. The RESP diagnostic exam was related to grades, and we found that the correlation between the RESP diagnostic exam and grades was greater for STEM grades than non-STEM grades. We found that the diagnostic exam accounted for an incremental 9% of variance in STEM grades above SAT performance, but only 1% of incremental variance above SAT in non-STEM grades. Moreover, we found evidence of range restriction for both SAT and RESP diagnostic exam performance for Rice University matriculants, further suggesting the utility of the diagnostic exam is at the lower end of the distribution. In summary, our results suggest that an additional diagnostic exam written by schools to specifically measure STEM preparation for their program can be a useful addition to procedures for selecting students for special experiences such as summer bridge programs.