Enhancing Undergraduate Enrollment, Persistence, and Graduation in Science and Mathematics

This project will contribute to the national need for highly skilled scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students at Bryant University. Over its five-year duration, the project will provide scholarships to 18 undergraduate students who are pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in Actuarial Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Biology, or Environmental Science.

First-year students will receive up to four years and transfer students up to two years of scholarship support. The project proposes to improve low-income STEM student success by better understanding barriers that keep students from engaging in available high-impact practices. That information will be used to mentor students toward such activities.

This approach to mitigating barriers, coupled with community building, is expected to improve graduation rates for low-income STEM majors. Through its research activities, the project has the potential to contribute to a better understanding about how to support qualified low-income students to attend college, major in STEM, earn a STEM degree, and pursue STEM careers.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. There are three specific aims: (1) Reduce low-income students’ financial burden through scholarship and other forms of financial support; (2) Implement sustainable curricular and co-curricular campus programming to alleviate known barriers to success; (3) Provide STEM Scholars with meaningful curricular opportunities known to enhance academic success and increase post-graduation opportunities.

Little is understood about why qualified, low-income students with interests in STEM, when provided with an opportunity to apply for a scholarship to assist in paying for college, may choose to not apply for the scholarship and/or to major in STEM. This project plans to use qualitative analyses of focus group and interview data to increase understanding of these decisions and outcomes.

The project has the potential to advance understanding of student attitude as a mediating variable on high impact practice participation and STEM student success. Dissemination of project results emphasize reaching STEM faculty and administrators, high school STEM teachers and guidance counselors, and college admissions departments. Dissemination will occur through targeted presentations and formal publications.

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.