Increasing retention of part-time and full-time STEM students with scholarships, mentoring and mathematics tutoring

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at The University of Akron (UA). UA is a commuter campus located in the center of downtown Akron, Ohio. Over its 6-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 103 unique students who are pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in Biomedical Engineering, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Biology, or Chemistry.

Three S-STEM scholar cohorts will receive scholarship support from their first year to graduation. Approximately half of the scholars will be directly admitted to their department of choice, half will be non-direct admit students, and approximately 10% will be enrolled part time. Inclusion of part-time students will provide financial support to a student group often overlooked and has the potential to increase retention rates of these students.

In addition to scholarship support, the proposed program will provide the scholars: an S-STEM specific learning community; cohort-specific laboratories; peer and faculty mentoring; cohort-specific mathematics recitation/tutoring spanning weekends, weekdays and evening times; additional academic advising from project investigators; and research opportunities. These collective support programming activities will enable us to increase the retention and graduation rates of students from the most economically disadvantaged regions of the State of Ohio, including Appalachia.

Within the framework of a case study, documenting which interventions achieved the most impact on student retention can provide tools that can be implemented at other universities to support retention and graduation of talented full-time and part-time students with financial needs, especially students from underrepresented groups, including women and persons with disabilities.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. This project will examine the increase in retention and graduation by providing students with interventions focusing on addressing financial barriers, targeted academic supports in math courses, peer and faculty mentoring and engagement in learning communities.

Frequently, the lack of retention in engineering disciplines is attributed to the calculus sequence. The need to retake Pre-Calculus, Calculus I or Calculus II often leads to students taking longer to graduate. This effect is more pronounced for part-time students.

This project will investigate if a dedicated math tutoring/recitation, used to specifically address retention issues associated with the calculus classes, will improve pass rates. Peer and faculty mentoring aims to increase students’ sense of belonging. The project will also examine ways that participating in the S-STEM program influences students' self-efficacy in STEM, sense of belonging and career awareness for STEM.

The impact of program activities on students' retention will be investigated using a convergent mixed methods design. This project has the potential to advance understanding pertaining to student success in first-year math classes, social-cognitive factors impact the persistence and career choice of part-time and full-time students. The results of our study will be disseminated on the UA campus via Institute of Teaching and Learning (ITL) seminars.

Results will also be disseminated to other urban commuter schools by presentations at the national ITL conference and articles submitted to discipline specific journals. 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.