STEM-relevant Civic Engagement and Service as a Foundation to Prepare Rural Undergraduates for STEM Careers

This project will contribute to the national need for skilled scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians. It will do so by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Morningside College, a private four-year liberal arts institution. This five-year project will provide scholarships to two cohorts of twelve students, to support their attainment of bachelor’s degrees in biology, chemistry, computer science, or mathematics.

First year students will receive up to four years of scholarship support. The project seeks to increase the retention and graduation rates among rural STEM students by supporting them through STEM-centric civic engagement activities, together with faculty and peer mentoring programs, a mathematics co-requisite course, undergraduate research experiences, and career-oriented externship opportunities with industry partners.

Because the College has a large population of students with rural backgrounds, this project will explore the complexity of issues with recruitment, persistence, and success of STEM students from this population.

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 of this project include a) increasing the first- to second-year retention, and graduation rates of STEM scholars, b) enhancing their scientific workplace or graduate school readiness, and c) integrating civic engagement experiences with STEM courses.

The research question will investigate how student involvement in science-centric civic engagement activities embedded within STEM courses might contribute to increased retention in STEM disciplines and to increased attitudes of civic responsibility, particularly among students from rural backgrounds. The expected outcomes are increased STEM student retention rates and graduation of STEM professionals who are ready to make a positive impact on their communities.

Throughout the five-year project, an external evaluator will provide feedback on the project by reviewing longitudinal institutional assessment data, student success and progression measures aligned with project elements, and student attitude and perception data. The results will be shared through regional and national conferences and participation in events sponsored by organizations such as the Council of Independent Colleges.

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.