Boosting Access to Data Science Scholars

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 Massachusetts Amherst. Over its 6-year duration, this project will provide scholarships to 40 unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Informatics or Computer Science in the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS).

First-year students will receive four years of scholarship support and transfer students will receive two-year scholarships. This project aims to increase student persistence in STEM fields by linking scholarships with evidence-based supports, including faculty and near-peer mentoring, faculty led advising, mentored research experiences, graduate school and career preparation, and participation in discipline-specific conferences.

Scholars will work with faculty and near-peer mentors to develop individual academic plans outlining their areas of interest and steps toward achieving their goals. The project will also support curriculum improvements aimed at increasing first-year student retention and decreasing time to completion in STEM. The data science focus of the informatics major at UMass Amherst and the diverse population of students served by the institution will contribute to broadening participation in a critical workforce area.

The project also has the potential to increase understanding about the impact that an applied educational emphasis within computing can have on the recruitment, retention, and time to completion for this student population.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. There are three specific aims: expand access to high quality data science career and research pathways; improve the retention rate of first-year students; and decrease time to completion for community college transfer students.

External pressures such as financial stress coupled with psycho-social factors such as imposter phenomenon, stereotype threat, and lack of role models have all been documented to impact student success in STEM. Less is known about the impact of an applied educational focus coupled with discipline-specific student success supports on the retention and persistence of students who are first-generation and from populations underrepresented in STEM.

Through interviews and other qualitative methods, the ongoing evaluation of the project will advance understanding of the student scholars’ perceived efficacy of the discipline specific support services and the significance of pursuing an applied educational focus. These results will be compared to existing reports such as the NSSE (National Study of Student Engagement) and to the results of the annual UMass Amherst Senior Survey.

Additionally, evaluating student success efforts across the parallel cohorts of community college transfer and 4-year students will enable project leaders to recognize and report areas where the met and unmet needs of the two populations diverge. Lessons learned will be disseminated to the broader STEM and computer science education community. 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.