The Pee Dee Scholars: Forging STEM Transfer Success in the Pee Dee Region of South Carolina

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 Coker University (CU), a four-year private liberal arts institution, and Florence Darlington Technical College (FDTC), a two-year technical college. Over a six-year duration, this project plans to fund scholarships to 48 full-time students pursuing Bachelor’s degrees in biology, computer science, mathematics, and chemistry at CU or an associate’s degree in general science at FDTC.

First-year students will receive up to four-years of scholarship support at CU and associate’s and transfer students will receive up to two-year scholarships at FDTC and CU, respectively. The first two years of the project will feature collaborative, cross-institutional, and evidence-based activities including a three-tiered faculty/peer mentoring model, intrusive advising, first-year experience course, and a STEM symposia series.

In addition, to boost science identity, community, STEM career awareness, persistence in STEM, retention, and transfer student capital (TSC) in FDTC-based scholars, the project team intends to create a cross-institutional living learning community. The final two years will further develop scholars’ scientific identity and belonging, promote career and research experiences, and prepare scholars for careers or graduate school in STEM through internships with industry, undergraduate research opportunities, and student ePortfolios.

This project proposes a cross-institutional and scalable approach to improving retention, graduation, and transfer rates of low-income students who are underrepresented in STEM, including underrepresented minorities (URMs), and first generation in their families to attend college.

To increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need, the project will pursue several specific aims. First is increased enrollment of domestic, low-income, academically-talented students in both CU and FDTC STEM majors of focus. Second is adaptation and implementation of evidence-based curricular and co-curricular activities to increase retention, persistence, transfer, and graduation rates for Pee Dee scholars.

And third is increased numbers of low-income, academically talented STEM graduates from the Pee Dee region who enter the STEM workforce or seek advanced STEM degrees after graduation. Despite the wealth of data showing the challenges encountered by low-income community college students who seek to transfer to four-year colleges and earn bachelor’s degrees, there remains a dearth of information related to the cross-institutional strategies to support low-income students in the transfer process and completion of a four-year degree.

Very few studies have sought to estimate the effects of cross-institutional partnerships between a two- and a four-year college on transfer student bachelor completion rates. This project will advance understanding of the main factors that influence students’ self-efficacy and agency to complete a four-year degree in STEM by examining the existing barriers for low-income community college students.

In particular, the project leadership will be guided by a central research question: "What factors contribute to success of low-income, transfer students in STEM?" The project investigators hypothesize that the combination of enhanced financial support coupled with evidence-based practices and rich cross-institutional engagement supported by the TSC framework will increase student success including persistence in STEM majors and overall retention in college. Furthermore, these practices are expected to lead to greater rates of matriculation into four-year and/or graduate and professional programs followed by employment in a STEM career.

This project will be evaluated using a mixed methods approach using quantitative and qualitative data from institutional data, faculty, mentor, and student surveys and focus groups, pre- and post-tests, and graduation and placement data. Results of this project will be made available utilizing the "Yes We Must" Coalition, the South Carolina Advanced Technological Education Center (SCATE) Center of Excellence, and through presentations at national and regional conferences, and intended publications through peer-reviewed journals.

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.