Humanitarian Engineering and Science Ambassadors (HESA): Leveraging Funds of Knowledge for Student Success

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 Colorado School of Mines. Mines is a public university focused on science and engineering. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships for at least 43 unique full-time students who are pursuing graduate degrees in Humanitarian Engineering and Science (with specialties in Environmental Engineering, Geophysics, Geological Engineering) as well as students in these partner disciplines who are doing humanitarian engineering and science projects.

Students are expected to complete their degrees within two years. Those enrolled in the project will receive a $10,000 scholarship per year. In the Humanitarian Engineering and Science master’s program, students integrate knowledge from engineering, geoscience, and social science to solve contemporary challenges alongside the communities they seek to serve.

Students enrolled in the project will have opportunities to participate in mentorship and professional development activities that connect their STEM learning with their funds of knowledge, or the skills and knowledge that people develop through their daily work and family lives but are infrequently recognized as knowledge in formal classroom settings. This project will: 1) mentor students to view their funds of knowledge as assets in their STEM learning and career development and 2) mentor faculty to make their classes and advising practice more inclusive of the funds of knowledge of low-income students.

The proposed project aims to advance understanding of best practices for using the funds of knowledge framework to support low-income students pursuing graduate STEM degrees. Master’s level training is vital because it will allow high-achieving, low-income students to build their knowledge base through advanced coursework, to gain proficiency in independent research and community-based projects, to access jobs that offer more leadership and higher pay, and/or to transition into PhD programs.

Finally, the unique focus of humanitarian engineering and science training means that students will tackle key societal problems that impact under-served communities, such as air and groundwater pollution, food (in)security, geohazards, and access to clean water and affordable energy.

Specifically, the Humanitarian Engineering and Science Ambassadors (HESA) project will provide scholarships and mentoring opportunities to low-income graduate students whose thesis research or non-thesis practicum combines a disciplinary specialty in environmental engineering, geological engineering or geophysics, and others, with social scientific coursework in sustainable community development. The role of students’ “funds of knowledge” in their academic success will be investigated.

HESA will provide a formal platform for low-income students to learn and practice connecting skills at the graduate level. Students will have an opportunity to map their own funds of knowledge and connect them with their STEM learning and professional development. A mixed methods (interviews and surveys) approach will be used to study whether those practices enhance students’ confidence, interest in STEM, and sense of graduation certainty.

This will allow us to investigate: 1) whether “connecting” skills can be developed through mentorship; 2) whether connecting skills enhance low-income students’ self-efficacy, STEM identities, and persistence beliefs; and 3) the role of funds of knowledge in graduate training and career transitions. Results of this project will be disseminated through webinars, peer-reviewed journal publications, workshops, and presentations at conferences such as the American Society of Engineering Education.

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.