Influences of S-STEM Funding: Final Outcomes of Four Year Scientific Leadership Scholars Program Including Improvements to Department Retention Practices

Abstract

The NSF S-STEM sponsored Scientific Leadership Scholars (SLS) program at Humboldt State University (HSU) provides scholarships to a diverse cohort of students in Computing Science, Environmental Resources Engineering (ERE) or Mathematics. The program targeted financially eligible American Indian and first generation students from the HSU region. This paper reports the estimated final retention rates for the fourth and final year of the program and reports how the S-STEM funding has influenced educational practices in the ERE department. The lessons learned from SLS program have informed the ERE department Diversity and Retention Plan required by the new university accreditation process, whose purpose is to increase retention of diverse students in all majors. One part of the plan that was informed by the SLS project is the implementation of a peer mentoring program for first year engineering (ERE) students. The peer mentoring program was started due to the SLS project outcomes that indicated the importance of peer mentoring. Assessment of the new peer mentoring program is not yet complete. In addition, based on outcomes from the SLS project, the ERE department is encouraging the university to implement Triesman model workshops in introductory STEM courses and to implement targeted recruiting of underrepresented minorities to the engineering program. The SLS group persisting into year three remained more diverse than earlier corresponding major cohorts: 22 (59%) were either women and/or underrepresented minority (URM) students in STEM. In the 2007-08 academic year, 36 Cohort 1 students entered the program. Of the Cohort 1 freshmen, 23 (66%) persisted into their second year and 12 (33%) persisted into their third year as SLS majors. White and Asian Cohort 1 students were more likely to persist than STEM URM students (47%, n= 8 compared to 21%, n=4). In 2008-09, 15 additional SLS students were added. Of these students, 12 (80%) persisted into their third year as an SLS major. While all white students (6) in Cohort 2 persisted, 67% (6) of the underrepresented students persisted. All 4 women in Cohort 2 persisted. There was no significant difference in the persistence based on gender or first generation status. These earlier results have already been presented. The SLS program has supported 51 students over the past 4 years. Of these students, 54% where underrepresented minorities and 70% were underrepresented in STEM. In reporting our retention results, we spilt our scholarship recipients into two groups: Group 1-New Diversity and Group 2-Supporting Diversity. The Group 1 students were at a higher risk of leaving the university. By their fifth academic year 22% of Group 1 students will either have graduated or continued in their STEM pathway course Page 22.870.2 taking. Group 1 major persistence rates were similar to what have been reported by others (30-70%). The Group 2 students were recruited from students already successful in the SLS majors at HSU. Group 2 has a very high persistence rate in their majors. By the...

Mapping Engineering Leadership Research through an AI-enabled Systematic Literature Review

“…Similarly noted by Yousefdehi et al [11], much of this research focuses on the array of EL programs that have been developed over the years. These Academic and Cocurricular Programs include those emphasizing collaboration with industry partners, particular disciplines (e.g., Civil Engineering [30] or Manufacturing [36]), student level (e.g., graduate teaching assistants [33] or general EL development), and program type (e.g., academies, scholarships [32]). While most of the papers describing the programs and their development include some sort of evaluation to demonstrate efficacy, one cluster of papers specifically speaks to approaches for Evaluation of EL Programs.…”