Scholarships and Supports for Self-Efficacy Development and Career Launching to Increase Undergraduate Degree Attainment in Cybersecurity

Metropolitan State University, Saint Paul MN

Investigators

Abstract

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated cybersecurity professionals by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Metropolitan State University. This University is a four-year Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution. Over its five-year duration, the project will provide up to two years of scholarship support to 30 undergraduate juniors and transfer students who are pursuing a bachelor's degree in cybersecurity. The Scholars will be selected in three annual cohorts. The project aims to increase student persistence in cybersecurity by linking scholarships with effective support activities, including mentoring, cohort-based industry-relevant certification training, intensive training on a state-of-the-art cybersecurity emulator, and a structured career-launching work experience after the scholarship support ends. Mentoring/advising will include faculty mentors, student mentors, and professional advisors, with a focus on providing relevant and timely guidance that will advance Scholars’ academic and career success. Examples of mentoring/advising topics include successful college student behaviors, emotional support for Scholars during transition points or times of academic/personal challenges, support activities within certification courses, and reflections on future career pathways including introductions to professionals for job shadowing. Because Metropolitan State University has a high population of underrepresented students, this project has the potential to broaden participation in the cybersecurity field and to advance knowledge about how to support retention and graduation of this student population in cybersecurity. The overall goal of this project is to increase cybersecurity degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project aims to study how outcomes such as Scholars' enrollment intensity (i.e., enrolling in a higher number of credits per year compared to peers) and self-efficacy are impacted by intensive co-curricular support and career-focused expectations. Drawing from Social Cognitive Career Theory, this project will test and contribute to the body of literature on whether co-curricular supports that explicitly target self-efficacy and outcome expectancy as drivers of personal career choice actions are effective at increasing persistence and degree completion for low-income, academically talented students in technology-rich fields. The project aims to identify the barriers and enablers for applying to and completing the cybersecurity program. This project has the potential to generate new knowledge about the role of scholarships and enrollment intensity among low-income academically talented students with the overarching goal of understanding the factors that enable or impede cybersecurity degree attainment. The project will be evaluated using appropriate instruments to anchor the evidence triangulation process, based on artifacts from learning and teaching episodes, interviews, surveys, and focus groups. The results of this project will be disseminated through the institution website, presentations at local conferences, Minnesota State System collaboration meetings, regional and national science education conferences (e.g., Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education or SIGCSE), and articles published 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 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.