Developing and Sharing Research on Low-Income Community College Student Decision-Making and Pathways 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. This project will conduct research on decision-making processes of low-income students related to staying on and succeeding in STEM pathways and the importance of community colleges experiences in this process.

This project will create a broad network of community college STEM faculty members and administrators who can inform and be informed by the research. It will also seek to build capacity among community college STEM faculty members and administrators to perform research. The significance of the project is in serving as a national resource to help understand how low-income students make decisions and how colleges can better support them.

The intellectual merit of the project is its contribution to understanding low-income STEM student pathways through the lens of decision making. Among the broader impacts is the immediate applicability of the research to improve community college STEM programs to promote the academic and professional success of low-income students.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The research will investigate pathways and decision-making processes relative to STEM persistence, attainment, transfer, and careers of low-income community college students. The primary contribution of the project is to the knowledge base regarding decisions of low-income students to remain and succeed on STEM pathways and how community college S-STEM programs, strategies, and supports may contribute to this process.

Understanding the pivotal decision points on student pathways and the complex array of influences on them is essential to making STEM education more equitable. Recognizing the importance of the broader social context in understanding the experiences of low-income individuals, the research will draw on sociological perspectives to examine the following questions: How do elements of the S-STEM program (i.e., recruitment and selection processes, the S-STEM scholarship, and S-STEM curricular and co-curricular supports) influence student decision-making to continue or leave a STEM pathway?

How do institutional contexts, including and beyond S-STEM (i.e., policies, practices, resources, and opportunities), influence students’ decisions to remain on or depart from a STEM pathway? How do student attributes (i.e., engagement and use of economic, social, and cultural resources) influence decisions to persist on or leave a STEM pathway? The project is composed of three sets of interconnected activities.

First, the project will engage and build a network for identifying research needs and sharing research within and beyond the S-STEM community through leadership groups, network building, proposal-preparation workshops, research-to-practice clinics, and broad dissemination. Second, the project will generate evidence and tools through structured research on community college S-STEM programs, including a grantee survey, case studies, a systematic review, and a student survey.

Third, the project will expand research and build research capacity within the S-STEM community and among community colleges in general through research partnerships and research fellowships. All project activities will promote a collaborative approach to research that is grounded in community college practice and intended to inform the S-STEM community and community colleges more broadly.

Guidance for the project will be provided by leadership groups of community college practitioners and community college STEM students, as well as by an external evaluation. The findings from the project will be disseminated widely through the project’s network, as well as an array of related disciplinary and community college membership associations.

The project will also yield publications including working papers, issue briefs, academic publications, strategy briefs, and toolkits. 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.