Scholarships, Community, Mentoring, and Leadership Development to Support STEM Undergraduate Student Success

Agnes Scott College, Decatur GA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Agnes Scott College. Agnes Scott College is a liberal arts college for women serving a high percentage of underrepresented minorities. Over its five-year duration, the project will fund scholarships for twenty unique, full-time students pursuing bachelor's degrees in astrophysics, biochemistry-molecular biology, biology, chemistry, mathematics, mathematics-physics, neuroscience, or physics. Scholars will enter in two cohorts and receive scholarships for up to four years. The Scholars will participate in a new three-day pre-orientation program and be part of a special Living and Learning Community in year one. They will complete STEM-specific courses, a leadership course, and a leadership experience in their first two years. Finally, in their final two years, Scholars will participate in hands-on research. Scholars will receive targeted advising and career coaching. STEM students with financial need are often also first-generation college students from underrepresented minorities. Thus, the project expects to increase the numbers and diversity of students in natural sciences and their placement into STEM graduate education and careers. The project will investigate how an intensive support culture focused on community building, mentoring, career exploration, and leadership development affects Scholar persistence. This information could inform best practices for institutions with highly diverse student populations and will contribute knowledge to national efforts to broaden participation in STEM. The overall goal of this project is to increase degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The specific aims are to: 1) recruit, enroll, and support twenty academically talented Scholars with demonstrated financial need majoring in a STEM discipline; 2) increase Scholars’ retention and four-year graduation rate; and 3) increase the percentage of graduate Scholars who are admitted into a post-baccalaureate STEM program or employed in a STEM field within the first year after graduation. The project will obtain data for research and evaluation through focus groups, interviews, enrollment records, and retention data. The data from Scholars will be compared to that of their peers. Analysis of these data will generate new knowledge about diverse students' perceptions of their STEM self-efficacy, identity, and values at different times in their college careers. It will also provide insights into Scholars’ decision-making processes regarding persistence toward STEM degrees and career paths. Results of the studies will contribute to evaluation of a theoretical model of social influence on the development of students as STEM professionals, examining self-efficacy, identity, and values as possible mediating variables. The project team intends to disseminate the results of the project through regional consortia and/or annual STEM society meetings, STEM conferences targeting minority students, and articles in peer-reviewed journals. 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 STEM workers and 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.