Improving First-to-Second Year Retention and Closing Equity Gaps through a STEM Academy

This project aims to improve academic outcomes for Hispanic students by creating and piloting a new STEM Academy which will offer a combination of financial, academic, and social supports to an initial cohort of students. Such supports are ultimately expected to result in an increase in the number and diversity of STEM graduates. Columbia Basin College has consistently had high levels of attrition for first year STEM majors, particularly for low-income, first generation, and Hispanic students, with only a little more than half (54%) of these students persisting into their second year.

Through the development of the new STEM Academy, this project will increase first-to-second year retention rates in the School of Math, Science, and Engineering, and seek to close the school's retention equity gaps with respect to Hispanic students.

The goals of the STEM Academy project are to: 1) increase participants’ first-to-second year retention by at least 12%, and 2) reduce the retention equity gap by at least 50%. Towards that end, the project team will develop a new, cohort-based STEM Academy of 25-35 students for the pilot year. Students in the Academy will receive supports including direct financial assistance, reserved enrollment in linked courses, and a new dual-language orientation course specifically designed for STEM students.

STEM Academy participants will also benefit from intrusive academic advising, partnership with a peer mentor, and direct access to STEM professionals via an industry-led STEM colloquium. These high-impact practices are specifically geared toward increasing students’ sense of belonging and self-efficacy in STEM subjects, which will improve student persistence during the critical transition from the first year to the second year of their postsecondary education.

This will result in a larger and more diverse body of students who will be academically prepared to meet the growing needs of the STEM workforce. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs.

Projects supported by the HSI Program will also draw from these approaches to generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.

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.