Promoting Excellence, Retention, Scholarship in STEM (PERSIST)

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 Tuskegee University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Over its 6-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 23 unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics.

First year students will receive up to 4-years of scholarship support. The project aims to increase student persistence in STEM fields by linking scholarships with effective support activities, including mentoring, undergraduate research experiences, service learning, outreach projects, and participation in discipline-specific conferences. With the help of mentors, the scholars will create Individual Development Plans (IDP) outlining their career goals and steps toward achieving those goals.

The project will also support curriculum improvements aimed at improving first-year student retention in STEM. Because Tuskegee University has a high population of students from groups underrepresented in STEM, this project has the potential to broaden participation in STEM fields and to learn how mentoring and individual development plans support retention and graduation of this student population.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion for low-income, academically talented undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. There are three specific aims: (1) increase first year retention rates in biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics and mathematics, (2) graduate over 80% of scholars who participate in this project, and (3) investigate factors that promote persistence in STEM disciplines among low-income students.

The research for this project will be focused on college persistence for low-income students in STEM disciplines. More specifically, research questions will focus on (1) the extent to which recruited low-income students continue to persist in and graduate from STEM degrees, (2) the extent to which low-income students graduating from the Tuskegee PERSIST program differ from other low-income students in terms of critical skills required to persist in college, including academic efficacy, study skills, time management, motivation, social networking, and degree and institutional commitment, and (3) the relationship between student characteristics, student experiences and dispositions, campus environment, and engagement in mentoring with the persistence of low-income students in STEM degree programs.

This project has the potential to advance understanding of persistence in STEM disciplines among low-income students at HBCU’s. This project will be evaluated using a mixed methods approach with information from surveys, focus-groups, interviews, and demographic data. Evaluation questions will be developed based on the project goals and activities.

Results of this project will be made available through NSF progress reports, presentations at professional conferences, and journal publications. 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.