Increasing the Success of Talented Engineering Students with Unmet Financial Need with Scholarships, Culturally-responsive Curriculum, and Mentoring

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated engineers by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). UTSA is a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). Over its six- year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 36 uniquely talented, full-time students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering (BCE). Scholarships will be provided to cover the unmet financial need (UFN) of students entering their second semester freshmen year and will continue until graduation. The scholarships will be coupled with co-curricular activities to enhance workforce readiness, including inclusive mentoring, experiential learning, and workshops for leadership, self-efficacy, engineering identity, career counseling and employment placement. This project is expected to increase the number of students who persist and graduate in engineering, effectively compete in the job market, provide economic security to themselves and their families, and help secure the US’s place as a global leader. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. Financial needs strain students’ bandwidth, leading longer times to graduation relative to other student populations. To decrease this strain and address issues of persistence and sense of belonging, the following four specific aims will be completed: (1) Identify talented BCE students with UFN as scholarship recipients; (2) Increase awareness and preparation of faculty for implementation of evidence-based mentoring practices; (3) Support the development of students’ engineering identities through participation in experiential learning opportunities; and (4) Perform a rigorous assessment of the project, and disseminate knowledge to engineering education communities. Upon completion, this project will increase understanding of the factors that influence low-income students’ persistence, graduation, and success in engineering and will reveal new knowledge related to positive engineering identity and leadership development and indicators for advancements towards progress to graduation. The desired project outcomes include: (1) Increasing positive engineering identity, (2) Enhancing scholars’ workforce and research readiness; (3) Improving first-year retention rates in the targeted courses to 100% for scholarship recipients; and (4) Improving six-year graduation rates for BCE students to 90% in each cohort. The project will assess the implementation and impact of the scholar activities on the desired outcomes. The project outcomes will be disseminated by faculty and scholars using mixed strategies to a wide range of audiences. 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.