Increasing Retention and Graduation of STEM Undergraduates through Scholarships and a Learning Community Combined with Academic, Social, Professional, and Family Supports

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 STEM undergraduates. The project is located at Azusa Pacific University, a Hispanic-serving institution. Over its five-year duration, the project will fund scholarships to 14 students, who are enrolled at least half-time and are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in computer science, engineering, mathematics, and/or physics.

Scholars will enter the project in their first year in college and will be supported for four years. They will participate in a STEM learning community that includes enrollment in common courses, peer and faculty mentoring, and academic success coaching. Additional Scholar supports include a STEM-focused success coach who will provide career guidance, as well as internships and research opportunities.

A distinguishing feature of this project is organization of regular family gatherings designed to include Scholars’ families in supporting their students’ degree completion.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project aims to increase the Scholars’ first-year retention and four-year graduation rates. In doing so, the project intends to establish an enduring STEM-focused recruitment pipeline that includes local high schools with highly diverse student populations.

The project will advance understanding of the effectiveness of pairing significant scholarship support with mentorship, both peer-to-peer and faculty-to-student. With expert guidance from nationally recognized consultants, the project expects to provide Scholars with transformative mentoring experiences, and produce nationally normed, measurable results of project effectiveness.

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.