Sustained Cascade Mentoring in Mathematics

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 Baruch College. Baruch was formally designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) in 2022 and is part of the 25-campus City University of New York (CUNY) system, which is known as both the largest public university in the nation and the nation's largest urban university.

Over its six-year duration, this project will fund four years of scholarships to 12 unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor's degrees in Mathematics. Scholars will also benefit from new and expanded services, including cascade mentoring sustained for Scholars' entire time at Baruch, a variety of social and cohort-building activities in one of the world's cultural hubs, and career and research preparation.

The cascade mentoring model initially involves faculty mentoring students, adding peer mentoring as new cohorts join. As an HSI with a relatively high number of students in Mathematics and related quantitative fields, Baruch is well poised to diversify the STEM workforce. Additionally, the unique leadership and instructional experience imparted to Scholars through cascade mentoring will build the confidence, leadership skills, and sense of belonging among Scholars to send them to the peaks of their fields.

The project will generate new knowledge on the effects of cascade mentoring on persistence to graduation among students in Mathematics.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. Five specific objectives guide the work of the project. First is to enroll 12 low-income, academically talented students (in three cohorts of four students) into Baruch College’s Mathematics major as S-STEM Scholars.

Second is to retain at least 10 of 12 first-year Scholars into their second year, replacing all lost Scholars with new participants. Third is to graduate all Scholars who reach their junior year, and fourth is to ensure that all Scholar graduates are employed in fields related to their major or matriculate into STEM graduate programs within one year of graduation.

Fifth, and finally, is to generate knowledge on the effects of cascade mentoring among students in Mathematics with respect to retention rates, graduation rates, and social and psychosocial factors such as a sense of belonging in STEM. In this project, first-year students will benefit from intensive faculty mentoring immediately upon matriculation, focusing on acclimating to college life, navigating Scholars' chosen major, and mastering early, foundational courses within their major.

In year two, Scholars who have met all academic expectations will be invited to participate in formal mentoring training so that they can serve as paid mentors to newer students in the spring of their second year and continue thereon. While approaches like this have been used and evaluated in allied healthcare education environments to a moderate degree, there is little evidence of their application and efficacy in STEM settings, especially mathematics.

This project will explore the psychological and social effects of cascade mentoring on the students, particularly the practice's impact on students' sense of belonging in the sciences, their feelings of self-efficacy in STEM, and their interest in STEM careers. Project evaluation will examine the impacts on students and progress in meeting the identified benchmarks related to recruitment, GPA, retention, graduation, transfer, and career/graduate school choices.

Dissemination of project results will occur through the 25-campus CUNY system and math education venues. 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.