Chesapeake Scholars in the Physical Sciences

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at the University of Maryland, College Park. Over its five year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 28 unique undergraduate students who are pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in six physical science disciplines: Astronomy, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Geology, and Physics.

Incoming first year students will receive four years of scholarship support, while transfer students will receive up to three years of support. The project will also provide three years of support for students who declare a physical science major during their freshman year. Scholar participants in the program will be supported by both a faculty mentoring program and a peer mentoring program.

Students will have access to research experiences in university lab, and will have the opportunity to present the results of their research at professional conferences. Due to the University of Maryland’s location in the national capital region, scholars will have the opportunity to visit national labs and other federal science facilities. Other student support services are available, including career advising and preparation for graduate school.

The project leadership will study how well the programmatic activities engender a sense of belonging towards the disciplines and the Chesapeake Scholars cohort, and whether the program increases engagement in the academic programs and decreases attrition. The project will support an increase in the domestically trained STEM workforce in the region and nationally.

It will also seek to transform the educational experience of undergraduates in the university more generally.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The four specific goals of the program are to: (1) increase retention among academically talented bachelor’s degree candidates who matriculate at the university with a declared physical science major; (2) increase retention among academically talented students who declare a physical science major during or after their freshman year; (3) increase retention among academically talented transfer students who declare a physical science major; and (4) increase students’ self-reported sense of belonging to their disciplines and their cohort.

Two prior S-STEM programs at the University of Maryland have demonstrated the successful retention of academically talented low-income students studying engineering and physics. The Chesapeake Scholars program will investigate whether this retention success can be extended to a larger cohort of students studying a wider range of physical science disciplines.

More generally, the project will seek to advance the understanding of student persistence in undergraduate STEM education. Using typical four-year plans for each physical science degree, the project leadership has identified key course sequences (in math, physics, and chemistry) within which to track retention from semester-to-semester. Student retention rates from semester to semester will be tracked in these course sequences with flow diagrams, specifically for the Chesapeake Scholars and for the general student body.

Student retention in the physical science degree programs will be compared in relation to the one-year and two-year retention goals, including retention in-major, in the physical sciences, and within the college broadly. The results of internal and external evaluations will be disseminated so that scholars and the public have access to the findings.

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.