Supporting Perseverance and Degree Completion in a Diverse Undergraduate STEM Cohort through Scholarships, Peer Academic Coaching, and a Career Education Curriculum

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists and mathematicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Pacific University. This University is a small residential undergraduate liberal arts institution with a focus on serving regional and local underserved populations.

Over its five-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 65 unique full-time students who are pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in bioinformatics, biology, chemistry, computer science, environmental science, mathematics, and physics. Students in this ‘small-college-model’ cohort will include first-year, returning, and transfer students.

Scholars will receive two to four years of scholarship support and concurrent targeted support services through their fourth year of undergraduate study. The project is designed to serve a cohort of Scholars that is diverse in both STEM discipline and academic year in college. It is expected that this diversity will create an environment that promotes academic and social success through peer support and interdisciplinary STEM learning and discovery.

Building on the University’s existing student support services, the project will pilot test and evaluate the effects of two new academic support programs for STEM students: structured STEM-specific peer academic coaching and mentoring, and a three-course STEM career education curriculum. The project seeks to advance understanding of the extent to which financial support, faculty mentoring, peer coaching and mentoring, career education, and cohort development may synergistically support student persistence to degrees in STEM disciplines. As a result, it has the potential to broaden participation in the national STEM workforce.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. This program will support Scholars’ completion of baccalaureate STEM degrees and prepare them for STEM careers. Programmatic elements of the project include weekly seminar meetings, peer academic coaching, and a STEM career education curriculum.

Formative assessment of these targeted programmatic elements will inform ongoing implementation and identify best practices for supporting students' persistence in STEM. To evaluate Scholars’ development of a professional and social orientation toward STEM disciplines, the cohort will be evaluated via a longitudinal study that will survey students’ self-reported ‘belonging’ in STEM course work, STEM self-identification, perceived faculty and institutional support, perceived parental/family support, and STEM career orientation.

Participant’s academic and professional outcomes will be correlated to their professional and social development as well as participation in the project interventions. This project will address a knowledge gap in post-secondary STEM education research regarding best practices for delivery of STEM-specific peer academic coaching and career education curriculum.

In addition to dissemination to the STEM education community through presentations and publications, the conclusions of this study will be disseminated within professional organizations for undergraduate academic support and career services. 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.