HSI Pilot Project: San Antonio College’s Campeones de STEM

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 Pilot Project aims to enhance college student recruitment, participation, and course retention in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-focused courses through the development of mentorship opportunities and scholarships. The project will be critical for meeting and fulfilling exponential demands in high-demand, high paying STEM related jobs in the greater San Antonio area and the national region.

Importantly, given that persistent racial and ethnic inequality in STEM degree attainment, with lower persistence rates of Hispanic, and low-income STEM majors, it is timely to address STEM-related awareness gaps in secondary-to-higher education and transition to college. To solve these problems, our project will provide leadership opportunities to first-year students, with training from industry and academic experts on STEM-knowledge dissemination strategies to focused target audiences namely, secondary school children from similar socioeconomic backgrounds.

Our project goals will include the establishment of a San Antonio College (SAC) Campeones de STEM Academy, a two-day institute designed to invigorate and enhance SAC’s existing STEM programs.

The principal goal of Campeones de STEM initiative is to improve student participation and course retention in STEM courses at SAC, while enriching secondary STEM education at a target middle school. The project will provide scholarships to selected STEM major students currently enrolled in their first year at the college. This opportunity will pair these selected Campeones de STEM participants with selected general science courses at an inner-city middle school in SAC’s service-area.

Project activities include on- and off-site events, such as visits with local and renowned STEM leaders, hands-on science experiments, and field trips to local STEM centers and museums as well as a tour of the SAC STEM departments, classrooms, and laboratories. Expected outcomes include increased student retention in STEM courses and significantly greater involvement of secondary school children in STEM education.

Our project aims will investigate the following research questions: 1) Does SAC’s Campeones de STEM Academy significantly improve STEM awareness, and thereby, course participation, persistence, and PGR in first-year college students? 2) Is STEM outreach to secondary education students effective in improving interest in the STEM fields? and 3) Do informal STEM-related activities, including hands-on science experiments designed by college STEM faculty, and mentoring improve role model-based peer-learning endeavors in STEM and result in an incremental increase in STEM course participation and retention in first-year college students? Research methodologies used to asses these questions will include specified metrics compiled from quantitative and qualitative data.

Expected results include an increase in general awareness and interest in the STEM fields for both secondary middle school students and first-year college students, higher rates of persistence, productive grade rate (PGR), and course completion for the SAC participants, and the development of the secondary school students’ STEM-related skills through informal educational activities and mentorship. Apart from improved academic merits, this project has potential for broader impacts at a societal-level via its peer-to-peer learning and leadership roles.

This project is informed via intentional intervention strategies, such as exposure to STEM-focused content, interactions with the local area, STEM leaders, scholarship driven mentoring programs, and peer-to-peer opportunities with resource-poor setting populations in their schools. Importantly, Campeones de STEM project will also form the basis for a track 2 cross-institutional, community program to improve enrollment and retention rates in the STEM fields.

The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.

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.