Collaborative Planning for a Partnership to Build Persistence in Math-Intensive Degrees for Low-Income Students

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 the University of South Alabama, Coastal Alabama Community College, and Bishop State Community College, an HBCU. The planning effort includes a team of faculty and administrators representing the three institutions who will collect institutional data, build infrastructure, and develop procedures and strategies that will provide the basis for a multi-institutional Track 3 S-STEM proposal to provide academic and financial support for students pursing degrees in engineering, mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Enhancing the partnership between the community colleges and university is important to meeting the needs of students in the region who come with varying levels of preparedness for math-intensive STEM degrees. A broader goal is to strengthen the workforce of engineers and scientists in the central Gulf Coast region, a significant manufacturing corridor. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of high-achieving, low-income undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The intended scholarship program will include students who begin their studies at the university or community college level, and fund them through degree completion, including post-transfer. Math instructors at all three institutions will collaborate on strategies to increase retention of students to completion of calculus-intensive degrees. Academic supports for students in precalculus courses will be developed with a focus on deepening STEM identity to motivate persistence. Nationally, it is observed that students who begin their college-level math studies placed in precalculus courses are unlikely to complete degrees in engineering, math, or the physical sciences. This project will advance understanding of how the learning environment and advising affect STEM identity and ultimate persistence to degrees in math-intensive programs, including comparisons of those effects in the community college and university settings. 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.