Wisconsin Lutheran College (WLC) S-STEM Scholarship Program

Wisconsin Lutheran College, Milwaukee WI

Investigators

Abstract

The NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program will support the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Wisconsin Lutheran College (WLC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Throughout its five years, this project will fund 14 scholarships for two groups of seven students who are pursuing bachelor's degrees in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, or marine biology. Small colleges often have excellent and thriving science programs that regularly graduate well-qualified students to enter graduate school or careers in a variety of STEM fields. Private colleges with intimate class sizes and high-quality faculty and facilities require greater fees to maintain these features, putting them out of reach of many low-income students. In addition, rigorous introductory STEM courses prepare students well for more specialized upper level courses and future careers but have relatively high attrition rates. The WLC S-STEM Scholars (WSSS) Program will address these issues by providing scholarship aid and early research opportunities to help students navigate through introductory STEM courses. Partnerships with local high schools, homeschool associations, and college-prep programs will provide excellent candidates from diverse backgrounds. The WSSS Program hopes to adapt STEM education research performed at large research universities to a small liberal arts college. The program will introduce students to STEM laboratory research early in their education and maintain this exposure throughout their undergraduate careers. This will put concepts and practices from STEM courses into perspective, will increase one-on-one interactions with faculty and upperclassmen to establish better mentoring relationships, and will provide valuable experience for internship and career goals. Increased mentorship will ensure that program scholars are aware of and take advantage of resources such as tutoring, workshops, and career preparation opportunities. Finally, a STEM advisory council consisting of professionals from the burgeoning local STEM industry and graduate schools will help to prepare students for careers and opportunities after college. The WSSS Program will give superior STEM students that may not be able to otherwise afford or succeed in college the opportunity to get a first-class education to prepare them to enter a well-paying career. The WSSS Program will implement outreach and recruitment to low-income students including underrepresented populations in Milwaukee schools as well as homeschooled students. The program will implement a summer STEM orientation to provide research experiences to incoming scholars, a first-year Introduction to STEM Research course, continuing research opportunities, enhanced mentoring, and career networking opportunities. These activities build on and advance evidence in support of early research experience as a positive factor in STEM student success. They also show how associated peer mentoring, research peer groups, strong student-faculty interactions, and research skill-building workshops work together to integrate diverse students into a college research and academic culture and promote retention through increased confidence in abilities and self-efficacy. WLC will investigate these activities to examine their impact on enrollment and retention, graduation, and postgraduate placement rates. The WSSS program will strengthen the science departments' relationship with the Office of Admissions, high schools, and homeschool networks through recruitment activities. The program will also develop ties with industry through the creation of an industry-based STEM Advisory Council. This will contribute to a stronger pipeline of diverse and underrepresented students from secondary education through undergraduate programming and into the regional STEM workforce. The project team will also disseminate the results to other programs at WLC outside of the natural sciences and will generate evidence to assist other institutions in replicating program activities. 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.