Leaders Emerging And Pursuing STEM (LEAPS)

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 Saint Peter's University (SPU), a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in New Jersey. The project will support students through a combination of financial assistance and academic and other support.

Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to thirty (30) high-achieving, low-income undergraduate STEM majors in biochemistry, biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and physics. Additional support will include the fostering of student participation in summer programs, seminars, faculty and peer mentoring, individual research, internships with industry partners, access to and use of career preparation services, and community building.

To help diminish challenges often faced by students, the project aims to address problems of student under-preparedness, financial and time strains, and continuity to post-graduate studies and STEM careers, especially for commuters, who constitute a large population of the SPU student body.

To increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need, the project will pursue several goals. First is to adapt and implement evidence-based curricular and co-curricular activities to support project scholars. Second is to implement, test, and study through research and project evaluation strategies for systematically supporting student academic and career pathways in STEM in ways that are congruent with the institutional context and resources.

Third is to contribute to the knowledge base so that other colleges may successfully implement similar programs. And fourth is to disseminate outcomes and findings related to the supports and interventions to other institutions working to support low-income STEM students. Insights and outcomes from a mixed methods evaluation and an educational research program will generate new knowledge on which aspects of the project's support interventions, or combination of interventions, are most effective for retention, engagement, commitment, self-efficacy, academic performance, and overall success of students.

The lines of investigation will address gaps in the literature and inform other higher-education professionals seeking to support students with a combination of curricular and co-curricular interventions, especially for students who are underrepresented in their participation in STEM and those who commute. 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.