Building Capacity: Positive Learning Opportunities and Research Experiences to Promote Success in STEM

Saint Xavier University, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (HSI Program) aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge about how to achieve these aims. This project at Saint Xavier University will advance the aims of the HSI Program by increasing retention and graduation rates of undergraduates in STEM fields. To this end, the project will create a STEM Studio that will provide students with ongoing community, social, and academic supports. The STEM Studio will also serve as the hub for experiential learning opportunities and systemic faculty and peer mentoring of undergraduate students. Many high-impact educational experiences designed to broaden participation in STEM are directed at high-achieving and/or lower-achieving students. In contrast, this project will connect all students to high-impact educational experiences from which they are likely to show direct, measurable benefits. By addressing major challenges faced by many undergraduates majoring in STEM, Saint Xavier University expects to increase retention and graduation rates, which in turn will open doors to graduate level work and careers in STEM fields. To achieve the overarching goal of improving retention and graduation rates, the project will implement four objectives: (1) create the STEM Studio to provide a gathering place for a community of Saint Xavier University scientific scholars; (2) centralize targeted academic support strategies for undergraduates in science courses at critical transition points; (3) provide opportunities for student-faculty collaborative research and for other high-impact learning experiences such as short-term field research; and (4) provide networking opportunities and curriculum enhancements that connect academic coursework to the workplace. Success of this program will be evaluated in terms of both persistence to degree and assessment of the institutional climate for inclusivity. The project will apply a multivariate statistical analysis to the collected data to identify correlations between the objectives, student perceptions of validation and belonging, and academic outcomes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.