Accelerating Low-Income College STEM Students to Degree Completion at a Two-Year Hispanic Serving Institution in Rural Central Washington

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 Yakima Valley College (YVC). As a federally-designated Hispanic-Serving Institution, YVC serves a large population of low-income and Hispanic students. Over its 6-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to at least 60 unique full-time and part-time students who are pursuing associate's degrees in several STEM disciplines. Students enrolled in first- and second-year college classes will receive scholarships that will support them through degree completion or transfer from YVC. Scholars will be selected based on a strong record of prior academic achievement, financial need, and an expressed interest in a STEM discipline. Once selected, students will be oriented to YVC’s New Scientist Training-2 (NeST-2) program. NeST-2 Scholars will engage in a suite of discipline-specific academic support services, receive one-on-one advising, and participate in cohort-building enrichment activities. The project will expand upon YVC's original NeST program by increasing the number of scholars, focusing on their transfer success, and adapting techniques from university-based models. This program will potentially produce important insights that support the broad goal of diversifying the nation's STEM workforce. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. There are three specific aims: 1) recruit students who are academically talented with demonstrated financial need; 2) retain students once they become NeST-2 scholars, and: 3) generate new knowledge on the applicability to two-year colleges of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program (a long-standing and well-regarded student support program at a major Research 1 university). By studying the effectiveness of academic and career support with simultaneous events that reinforce belongingness, this program will identify strategies that offer a high return on investment. Establishing evidence-based best practices can spur replication of similar programs across the community college system of Washington State and the country. To achieve this scale of change the results will be disseminated widely through regional conferences. 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.