Promoting Early Retention of STEM Students: Achieving Change in our Communities through Equity and Student Success in STEM

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 Washington (UW) Tacoma. UW Tacoma is an Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI).

Over its seven-year duration, this project will fund scholarships 48 unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics, Environmental Science, Biomedical Sciences, Information Technology, Computer Science and Systems, Computer Engineering and Systems, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or Civil Engineering. First-time college students and first-year transfer students will receive full scholarships for their first two years and partial scholarships for their third and fourth years.

The project will include a summer mathematics preparation program that aims to enhance entry into STEM disciplines. Participants will be invited to engage in a research experience or project-based Introduction to Design course in their first year. Coupled with an optional on-campus STEM living learning community and required individual faculty mentoring, the quarterly Success in STEM seminar course aims to support scholars in the formation of a cohesive community through group mentoring.

Programming also aims to support students in their professional development. This project is distinguished by its focus on pre-STEM majors in their first and second years on campus, and includes mentorship training for approximately 40 faculty who will be teaching and mentoring diverse student populations. The University of Washington, Tacoma has a large population of students from groups historically underrepresented in STEM; this project aims to further research on how best to support first- and second-year undergraduate students as they enter STEM majors.

Through increased recruitment and retention in the critical first two years, the project endeavors to support diverse students, supporting the entry of talented and skilled professionals into the local workforce.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion among low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The specific objectives are to i) recruit talented, low-income students to STEM majors at the University of Washington Tacoma, ii) retain these students in STEM through student support mechanisms in the critical first two years, iii) improve student success and progress via intensive mentoring, early-entry math preparation, first-year research experience and design courses, and the Success in STEM seminar, and iv) broaden participation to promote equity and inclusion in STEM.

Mentoring, early research and design experiences, and strong learning communities have been demonstrated to affect psychosocial factors such as academic motivation, STEM identity, self-efficacy, interest/awareness of bias and barriers to STEM access, and health and well-being, thereby increasing student persistence in STEM. Less is known, however, about how these factors affect first- and second-year students at minority-serving institutions, particularly for AANAPISI institutions.

The PI Team hypothesizes that by providing math preparation, early research and design courses, strong learning communities, and intensive faculty mentorship, participants will experience increases in academic success, retention and academic motivation, STEM identity, self-efficacy, as compared with a representative control group. This project has the potential to advance understanding of the effectiveness of mentoring by incorporating an equity lens, coupled with community-engaged early research and design experiences to support the success of low-income students in STEM.

A mixed-methods approach combining quantitative data from yearly surveys with qualitative interviews will be used to assess project outcomes. Results of this project will be made available on the team's SSTEM project webpage and social media, and presented at conferences including the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research and AAC&U Transforming STEM Education, and published in journals such as the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education and the Understanding Interventions Journal.

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.