Improving Outcomes for At-Risk STEM First-Year Students through Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences

Suny At Stony Brook, Stony Brook NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by implementing Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) for first-year students who run the risk of taking more than four years to graduate with a degree. Undergraduate degree completion in STEM has been decreasing since 1970, threatening the historical preeminence in science and technology that the United States has enjoyed for the last 60 years. To promote STEM interest, motivation, and persistence, this project provides two CURE interventions for at-risk students. The first CURE intervention uses evidence-based pedagogical elements. The second CURE intervention uses both pedagogical and STEM-belonging elements. Both CURE interventions aim to improve GPA, fidelity to a STEM major, and retention in college through graduation. After each semester-long CURE intervention, the project will gather data on student success and perceptions of STEM belongingness to assess the importance of each pedagogical and social element independently. This project will identify successful strategies within the two types of CUREs to assist instructors and departments as they build appropriate courses and scale them to support at-risk STEM students across US universities. Undergraduate research experiences (URE) positively impact student retention and persistence in STEM, and an increasing number of well-controlled, large-scale, and longitudinal studies indicate that UREs can attract, retain, and ultimately improve the success of undergraduates in STEM. However, UREs traditionally occur as research apprenticeships where students work as part of a faculty member’s research group, and apprenticeships do not easily scale to serve entire cohorts of STEM-interested students. CUREs provide authentic and early research experiences to students at scale, engaging more students relative to traditional apprenticed research experiences. The goal of this project is to identify a critical gap in understanding what pedagogical and social elements would allow improved scalability and transferability. This project will provide an advanced understanding of a very specific question: How do CURES successfully support first-year STEM students who are at risk of failing to graduate in four years? By the end of this project, over 500 undergraduate students will benefit from this experience. This project will implement a suite of elements identified in the literature as pedagogically impactful including experiential active learning, authentic assessment, scaffolded mentorship, and civic engagement, all of which are designed to increase a sense of STEM belongingness in students. The project’s findings will contribute to the growing body of knowledge around CUREs and the ways they may be implemented to the benefit of students and their institutions. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through its Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. 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.