Supporting the Graduation of Transfer Students Pursuing Bachelor's Degrees in Mathematics, Computer, and Natural Sciences

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 Athens State University. This University is an upper-division university that exclusively serves transfer students, most of whom are adult learners.

Over its four-year duration, the project will fund scholarships to 30-45 different full- or half-time transfer students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Information Technology, or Mathematics. These Scholars will receive two to four years of scholarship support, depending on whether they are taking courses full or half-time.

To facilitate degree completion, scholarship support will be coupled with other supports, including structured faculty mentorship, access to laptops and online tutoring services, cohort and peer support activities, project-based learning opportunities focused on research and career preparation, and an online learning community that connects participants with peers and community mentors. This project has the potential to advance understanding of the support initiatives that are most effective for transfer students and adult learners in STEM fields.

Such information may be generalizable to STEM transfer students at four-year institutions. Athens State University has a high population of low-income students and is located within the science and technology hub of the Huntsville Metro Area. Consequently, this project can provide a pathway to degree completion that expands access of low-income, high-achieving students to regional STEM careers.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The specific project goals are to improve recruitment, retention, academic success, and graduation rates of academically talented, low-income transfer students in STEM fields through (1) financial assistance and access to critical technology, (2) project-based learning opportunities (including research and work-based learning), (3) peer support, and (4) faculty and community mentoring.

Although support initiatives that specifically target transfer students and adult learners have been shown to generally increase student success, more research is needed to determine which types of support are the most effective at increasing success in STEM fields. Because Athens State University is a transfer-only institution, this project is uniquely positioned to identify specific factors contributing to the success of transfer students in STEM fields.

The project will investigate whether and to what extent specific support structures increase academic success. To do so, it will use institutional data about recruitment, retention, and graduation rates, along with the results of Scholar surveys. The overall outcomes of the project are expected to be an increased understanding of effective ways to support transfer students in STEM majors and an increase in access to STEM careers for marginalized populations.

An external committee will conduct yearly formative evaluations of project implementation and effectiveness and will also conduct a summative evaluation at the end of the project. Results of this project will be disseminated through publications in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at local, regional, and national conferences. 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.