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The Purdue University Rising Scholars program was established in 2016 by a NSF grant designed to examine the effect of adult mentor support networks on student performance. The first students began classes in the fall of 2017, and their performance and many aspects of the program have been reported in the literature. Unfortunately, during this same time period, the COVID-19 pandemic moved across the globe and dramatically changed collegiate education. The effects of the pandemic in education will be felt for some time following the eventual demise of the virus. Because of this NSF grant period, the research team was uniquely positioned with matched pair sets of matriculating students from the Rising Scholars program, engineering, and exploratory studies. This paper will compare the performance of these students and the general student population for GPA and retention between the pre-COVID period (< spring of 2020) and the COVID period (spring 2020 onward). It is commonly perceived among collegiate instructors that student performance has suffered during the pandemic. The Rising Scholar demographic has the potential to have increased adverse effects from the pandemic disruption, but they also have an established adult mentor support network. The researchers have looked at differential performance outcomes between the various groups and exposed a tendency toward diminished performance with thinner networked students. Sample sizes were too small for the evaluation of any meaningful statistical tests. 

In 2016, an NSF S-STEM grant was awarded to explore the connection between student support networks and success within collegiate STEM field majors. For this on-going diversity study, promising students with low socio-economic status were selected from a pool of low socio-economic status applicants that were denied admission straight into engineering, but given admission into the university. These Rising Scholars were invited into a scholarship program based upon the quality of their support networks and their readiness for higher education. Local research on institutional efficacy supported the concept that student success and satisfaction with the collegiate experience were directly related to how welcome and comfortable the student felt within their chosen academic field. The students need to feel that they are part of a larger community that values them and their contributions. Advocacy organizations and smaller engineering schools, like Agricultural & Biological Engineering, do a good job creating this welcoming climate for their students. The Rising Scholar program was designed to create a local, familial cultural reference point for the students and utilize existing successful elements of the local university environment. Multiple experiential elements, professional communication exercises, and social opportunities were provided to enhance student skills and contact networks. The students were provided numerous chances for interaction and were continually reminded about networking strategies. Initial retention and GPA data support the conclusion that these students can be very successful in a highly ranked, R1 institution when provided with sufficient mentoring and means to reduce the financial burden of attendance.