HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Integrated Networking, Scholarship, and Peer Mentoring of Freshmen Engineers for Increased Academic Success and Graduation Rates

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 2 project aims to provide better academic and social support to UCSB College of Engineering (CoE) freshmen with one or more “effectors of opportunity’’ (e.g. first generation college student, low income, under-represented minority) to increase their academic success and sense of belonging in the major. This, in turn, is expected to increase the retention and successful graduation rates of these students. The disciplines of engineering and computer science in general, and the UCSB CoE specifically, disproportionately struggle to retain students from these communities. The Integrated Networking, Scholarship, and Peer Mentoring of Freshmen Engineers for Increased Academic Success and Graduation Rates (INSPIRE) project will create new infrastructure and institutional change to fundamentally transform how students with one or more "effectors of opportunity" experience the first year of engineering. INSPIRE will consist of a year-long, seminar-based curriculum that holistically inter-weaves academic and social curriculum and peer mentoring. By increasing the successful retention and graduation rates of targeted students, INSPIRE will educate and develop a new generation of diverse engineering and computer science graduates. These individuals will have the opportunity to pursue graduate degrees and/or join the workforce, where they can be role models who help hire and train future engineering and computer science talent. This project will focus its educational research on assessing how the proposed holistic approach changes (if at all) students’ internal narrative around success and failure, intrinsic motivation to persist in their discipline, and use of social support networks. This research will contribute new knowledge in peer mentoring and first-year retention by analyzing the differential effects of INSPIRE on retention and social identification, social capital, and social learning. A key outcome is to have a systematic approach to identifying the needs of stake-holders including faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students, and administrative support for retention to bring about institutional change. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims. 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.