Broadening STEM Participation Among Minority Students in a Urban Community College

Cuny Borough Of Manhattan Community College, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY (BMCC) is an urban community college which qualifies as both a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI)and a Minority Serving Institution (MSI). It does not offer degrees beyond the baccalaureate level. The project entitled "Broadening STEM Participation Among Minority Students in an Urban Community College" will support quality education, mentoring and internship opportunities for an ethnically diverse population. This initiative builds on the undergraduate research experience for students developed and implemented by the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) Meyerhoff program. This model of undergraduate research remains a novel concept for most community colleges. New knowledge will be added by BMCC research efforts, which will seek to determine the support programs that work to fully engage students and ensure that S-STEM interventions positively impact retention and graduation. As an alternative to research students will also be provided the opportunity to participate in off campus internships. Assignments will be developed by S-STEM faculty with input from the college's private industry partners. Students will work much like members of industry based teams, dealing with problems in areas of basic research, product development and testing, analytical technologies, risk assessment and regulatory compliance. Each intern will be supervised by company personnel and visited at the worksite by BMCC Cooperative Education Internship Coordinators. Sixty talented full-time students in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering and/or Science are expected to be recruited into the program and awarded a 2-year scholarship. Research indicates that an undergraduate research experience as a capstone experience undertaken by students during their final year of study is successful. The Meyerhoff program success is built upon the concept that by assembling a concentration of high achieving students in a tightly knit learning community, students continually inspire one another to do more and better. That program boasts a STEM retention rate of 86% which is twice the national average for all students and more than four times the average for African American students. BMCC has already in place programs and initiatives to support students success. The project will examine closely how the use of a structured STEM pathway model involving the use of the learning communities, in tandem with the Winter Bridge program, and faculty mentored research can achieve the same outcomes as those commonly found at residential four-year colleges such as UMBC, and whether these reforms can be sustained and replicated. Ongoing data collection, abstraction, and analysis will allow the research team to examine in specific and measurable ways the extent to which S-STEM participants are effectively being served and the success of program activities on improved academic outcomes (e.g., achievement, retention, graduation, post-secondary school enrollment). Collected data will be used to demonstrate if this model is useful when applied in early stages (critical and decisive years) of STEM careers. The results of this project will have a profound effect in determining whether similar reforms can be adapted by a urban community colleges serving populations traditionally underrepresented in the STEM disciplines.