Supporting STEM Scholars to Engage in the Blue Economy

Salve Regina University, Newport RI

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 Salve Regina University (Salve). Salve is a private four-year liberal arts institution serving almost 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to sixteen (16) unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in biology, chemistry, or mathematics. First year students will receive four-year scholarships. This program will include best practices in student success and retention to support students from their transition into college to their career search and placement. Specific activities in the program include a summer bridge program, a faculty fellow program, and experiential learning projects. Students will have access to several mentors selected from STEM faculty, staff, upperclassmen, and community partners to provide guidance at each step of the program. By partnering with local blue economy (ocean-focused) businesses and organizations, this program will prepare Salve students for employment through real-life experiences in the fast-growing blue economy sector. This program will increase the number of STEM graduates entering the workforce, helping to meet the labor needs of Rhode Island and the United States as a whole. The effectiveness of this program will be evaluated and shared with other institutions of higher education to act as models for systematic improvements in the retention of low-income students. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The underlying goals of the program are to: 1) Support a total of 16 scholars within the targeted disciplines; 2) Enhance extant and develop new student support services to ensure that 90% of the scholarship are retained from freshman to sophomore year and 90% of these scholars graduate within four years; 3) Offer early and ongoing engagement in STEM experiential learning to improve the Scholars' career readiness; and 4) Develop, formally adopt, and implement a plan to sustain the project activities that evaluation results demonstrate to be effective. Project evaluation will include a mixed-methods approach and will center around: i) understanding the impact of increased student support services, namely summer bridge programming, integrative cohort models, soft skills development, a formal multi-mentoring model, to improve retention and graduation rates of low-income students; ii) quantifying the impact of scaffolded experiential learning experiences on career readiness and employment rate; and iii) determining the impact of the program on long-term departmental and institutional goals to retain students from diverse backgrounds. The results of this project will be disseminated internally through meetings of the project team, faculty workshops, and administration briefings to the board of trustees. Data will be shared with the public through the project website, presentations at relevant conferences, publications in targeted scholarly journals, and a workshop series to engage faculty and administrators at similar institutions. 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.