Supporting STEM Undergraduates with Scholarships, Mentoring, and Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research Courses

This project will help meet the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians. It will do so by supporting the graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with financial need at Dixie State University. This University is an open-enrollment, comprehensive regional university in Southern Utah.

Over its four-year duration, the project will provide scholarships to 60 full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in biology, mathematics, computer science, chemistry, and mechanical engineering. The Scholars will enter in annual cohorts of about 20 students and receive two years of scholarship support. Scholars will participate in evidence-based practices known to promote academic success, such as mentoring and a regular study hall.

In addition, Scholars will participate in a series of research and prototyping courses called Innovative Solutions. These courses will span four semesters and immerse Scholars and their peers in a multidisciplinary research project. This experience is intended to help them learn to collaborate across STEM disciplines, a critical skill for success in many current and future STEM careers.

In the Innovative Solutions series, Scholars will learn about research methods, modern prototyping techniques, and technology startup fundamentals, while working in teams to solve modern real-world interdisciplinary challenges. This project intends to develop a replicable model that other institutions can use to integrate STEM disciplines and team-based learning in ways that promote undergraduate STEM student academic success and career preparation.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. This project’s scope also addresses two common challenges in preparing STEM students for STEM careers: their isolation from other STEM disciplines throughout degree programs and insufficient opportunities for real-world problem solving.

To overcome these challenges, the project will establish interdisciplinary cohorts from the biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, and mathematics. The Innovative Solutions Course Series will engage these cohorts in sequential one-credit courses that emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, and entrepreneurship.

Designed as a project-based learning experience, the course series will require participants to research, develop, test, and market a solution to a real-world problem. The topics selected in the courses will be contemporary challenges that enable students to be innovative contributors to the scientific body of knowledge. The project’s research and evaluation efforts will examine how the Innovative Solutions Course series affects Scholars’ academic success, communication and collaboration skills, content knowledge, critical thinking, and opinions about science.

The Innovative Solutions Course series represents a scalable model for student research and engagement. Insights gained from its implementation will be disseminated to the undergraduate STEM education community through conference presentations and journal 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.