HSI-SMART: STEM Model for Research and Teaching Undergraduate-intervention Program

California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo CA

Investigators

Abstract

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 project aims to increase graduation rates and reduce the time to degree completion for all science, mathematics, and engineering majors and to reduce the performance gap existing between Latinx and non-Latinx White students as well as between female and male students. The HSI-STEM Model for Advancing Research and Teaching (HSI-SMART) project will combine a set of four interventions into an integrated whole that spans students' entire undergraduate careers. This project will: facilitate summer advising workshops to create student-faculty relationships before the students' first semester, place appropriate students in key first year gateway classes as paid learning assistants, place students in paid research assistantships, and engage students in classroom activities to reduce anxiety and increase sense of belonging. Direct connection to professors and peers will support the retention of new students, classroom learning assistants will support student participation at its most crucial stage, and both learning- and research-assistantships will keep students engaged with the campus community and focused on their discipline. This program will create a self-propagating student community as Latinx and female students move through the advising workshops and introductory courses and are looped back into the learning and research assistantship programs as they proceed toward graduation. This project will bring together all STEM disciplines to increase Latinx and female participation, retention, and success by integrating a set of interventions into a coherent training and community-building model. The efficacy of interventions, while otherwise well-established, is not well-documented for Latinx and female student persistence in STEM degrees, particularly at HSIs. The project will address this gap in existing knowledge by addressing questions specifically about Latinx and female students: whether STEM-targeted summer advising sessions affect retention; whether psychological interventions addressing student anxiety and sense of belonging influence introductory course achievement and degree persistence; whether placing near-peers in gateway classrooms affects performance of both students and learning assistant; and whether engaging in research as undergraduates likewise supports a successful transition from novice to graduate. As it will recruit participants from Latinx and female student populations, the project hypothesizes that all these interventions will benefit that target populations' sense of belonging, academic performance, and graduation rates. The project will balance universal interventions with quantitative, controlled-study approaches to measure the importance of the aggregate and isolated interventions in success of Latinx and female students. This scalable, assessable, and integrated model of STEM belonging and achievement will add a critically relevant element to STEM educational literature and practice. More broadly, the project will fundamentally change the social dimension of the STEM student experience by creating and supporting community and inclusion from the moment students walk onto campus until their graduation, and will serve as model for student success and inclusive community building at other HSIs. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims. 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.