Scholarships, Service Learning, and Community Engagement to Improve Student Success in Engineering and Computer Science

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 the University of New Mexico, a Hispanic-Serving and Minority-Serving Institution. Over its five-year duration, the project will provide scholarships to 72 unique, full time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in computer science or engineering (civil, chemical, nuclear, and electrical and computer).

Scholars will be transfer students from two-year colleges and current upper division students in the School of Engineering. They will be admitted in three cohorts and receive annually renewable, one-year scholarships. Scholars will have access to a suite of student support, career, and workforce development activities.

In addition, they will participate in a year-long faculty-mentored learning community and engage in service learning and community engagement activities. Such activities have been shown to benefit students through relationship-building with local organizations as they work on technical problems faced by communities. Given the University’s student population, this project has the potential to broaden participation in the engineering and computer science workforce.

It also can directly benefit the local community through service-learning projects. This project will advance knowledge in the field of engineering education by studying how service learning and community engagement experiences influence students’ attitudes and beliefs toward public welfare, and whether learning communities and other organized academic activities help shape positive academic outcomes.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The specific aims are to: 1) develop Scholar cohorts through engineering faculty-mentored learning communities, known to support persistence and academic success; 2) provide a suite of career and workforce-development activities focused on preparation for high paying jobs; 3) create an academic culture that fosters the development of societal responsibility; and 4) generate new knowledge regarding how to nurture community in educational practices and how to integrate social relevance in engineering/computer science curricula.

This study will address three research questions: 1) How do paid service learning/community engagement experiences influence Scholars’ attitudes and beliefs and does Scholar interest change as they approach graduation? 2) How do these attitudes and beliefs compare to Scholars who undertake unpaid Honors Thesis service learning/community engagement experiences for academic credit? 3) To what extent and in what ways do integrated project activities affect Scholars’ communication skills? The project will be evaluated through a mixed-methods approach using data collected about Scholar performance as well as observations and feedback from Scholars and faculty mentors from surveys and interviews.

Results of this project will be made available to the university community through annual campus presentations, to the public through local media outlets, and to the STEM education community through conference presentations and a project website. 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.