CIS Cyber Scholars Program

Robert Morris University, Coraopolis PA

Investigators

Abstract

This five-year project will support the success of thirty low-income, high-achieving community college transfer students with demonstrated financial need at Robert Morris University (RMU), a private, suburban university. Achieving this goal will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians. The project will provide scholarships to transfer students from rural community colleges who are pursuing bachelor's degrees in Computer and Information Systems, Cyber-Forensics and Information Security, and Data Analytics. Low-income transfer students who are underrepresented in the computing fields such as females, residents of rural southwestern Pennsylvania, minorities, and first-generation college students will receive two-year scholarships for their third and fourth year of study. The project aims to recruit, retain, graduate, and place these students in STEM careers in the Pittsburgh region or graduate schools nationwide by implementing and studying directed support strategies. These strategies include a new orientation course for STEM transfer students, a project-based faculty-student mentorship program, service learning opportunities, active learning education, and career development and placement activities. These recruitment and retention strategies developed through the program will yield a demonstrated pathway for other four-year institutions to engage community college students and will increase RMU's institutional capacity to help all students enter the local STEM workforce. The overall goal of the project is to increase the success rates of low-income, academically-talented students with demonstrated financial need in STEM majors as well as placement of such students in STEM graduate-school programs and the STEM workforce. Strategies to strengthen community college transfer students' pathways to undergraduate success have been rigorously investigated in both STEM and non-STEM fields but have yielded mixed results about how to deploy four-year colleges' resources most effectively to support these undergraduates. This project will contribute to the knowledge base of effective practices for community college transfer students' STEM success by 1) studying the effectiveness of the IntegrateRMU transfer experience course on the transition experience of transfer students into a four-year university, and 2) investigating the barriers to transfer student retention, undergraduate educational goals, and STEM career aspirations. This project has the potential to advance understanding of the role that engaged learning and directed support efforts play in retaining and placing underrepresented students in the STEM workforce. It will also contribute to the literature on the success of transfer students from rural community colleges in the STEM fields. This project is funded by NSF's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future scientists, engineers, and technicians, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students. 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.