HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Successful Outcomes Achieved through Research in STEM (SOAR in STEM)

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 2 project aims to strengthen STEM learning for low-income, first generation, female and other high-need/disadvantaged students to improve student retention and ultimately graduation at the Ponce and Guayama campuses of the Inter American University of Puerto Rico (IAUPR). The SOAR in STEM Program will provide disadvantaged students with a quality STEM education through CUREs and academic supports that will not only prepare them to become highly qualified scientists/professionals, but also will improve retention and graduation rates in STEM, thereby broadening participation in STEM. The project will also contribute new findings that can reform the STEM learning environment for Hispanic, low-income, female and/or first-generation students at other primarily undergraduate HSIs in Puerto Rico and across the nation. Gateway/bottleneck courses will be redesigned by implementing multidisciplinary CUREs in a collaborative setting in physics, general chemistry, organic chemistry and biology laboratory sections. Students will be engaged at the beginning of their academic career in a multidisciplinary research experience combined with peer mentoring and additional activities such as research dissemination, exam-wrappers sessions, bootcamp and academic advising as mechanisms for improving student success at IAUPR. The program activities will support continued evolution of multidisciplinary CURE design and implementation in these laboratory sections at the two campuses of the IAUPR, with the goal of improving psycho-social metrics linked to student success (sense of belonging, self-efficacy, desire to persist and STEM identity), as well as provide evidence about how a multidisciplinary, collaborative CURE in combination with additional academic support can contribute to improved retention and graduation rates in STEM. Through the combination of program activities and dissemination efforts (SOAR in STEM website, publication in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at local, regional and national conferences) the impacts of the SOAR in STEM program will reach across the Inter American University system, the island and the nation at large. 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.