Rising Scholars: Web of Support used as an Indicator of Success in Engineering

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

This project will establish a support and mentoring system for students with low socioeconomic status (SES) in the Purdue University School of Engineering. Scholarship support will be provided for twenty academically motivated, low SES students to support four years of education in engineering. Students with low SES typically come from high schools with fewer resources than their wealthier colleagues, impacting their ability to take Advanced Placement classes and to engage in academic support and tutoring for standardized exams, which can affect their placement in competitive engineering programs. This project will devise strategies and collect data to demonstrate that students that lack the competitive advantage of higher SES can successfully enter and complete an engineering major when the appropriate support mechanisms are provided. Participants in the project, dubbed "Rising Scholars," will be identified from those students who applied for entry into the Engineering major, but were denied and diverted into Exploratory Studies instead. These would be students who are judged not competitive for the major at entry, but who still have a chance of academic success in the major, based on GPA and standardized test scores. The project will create assessment and progress monitoring oversight groups to guide Rising Scholar cohorts from matriculation to post-graduation job placement, will develop and deploy techniques to identify applicants with the potential for STEM success from low SES populations, and will nurture Rising Scholars and their support networks to provide a "high touch, high impact" path through college. Data will be collected from the cohorts using specifically designed survey instruments to determine how a student's support network changes and grows as the student is matriculated, retained and graduated from selective and rigorous STEM programs and to determine what quantifiable metrics can be used to improve the admission process to identify and open the way for an economically diverse student body in STEM.