Building a Chemical Engineering Inter-Institutional Consortium to Support Talented, 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 pursuing degrees in chemical engineering at Prairie View A&M University, the University of Houston, and the University of Kentucky. Despite efforts to improve retention and graduation rates in engineering, challenges persist across these three institutional contexts (a Hispanic-serving Institution, a Historically Black College & University, and a Predominantly White Institution in an EPSCOR jurisdiction), as well as in the broader engineering community. Data from these institutions show a relationship between financial stress, mental health issues, and reduced academic performance among engineering students. This planning grant will use student focus groups to enable the identification of services that would provide financial, engineering identity, and wellness support for students enrolled in chemical engineering programs. Interventions will effectively account for the culture of chemical engineering as a course of study and incorporate students as co-creators of knowledge around what it takes to support student success, well-being, and retention. The planning activities will inform a future Track 3 S-STEM proposal that will support scholars across the three collaborating institutions. The overall goal of this project is to understand how to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. Over its one-year duration, this Collaborative Planning Grant project will identify interventions to support the financial stability, engineering identity, and wellness of undergraduate students enrolled in chemical engineering programs. Existing interventions to improve student support are often institution-centric, lack supporting evidence, or do not consider the unique aspects of disciplines. They also tend to overlook student insights as an important part of developing new practices and generating knowledge. This project will enable the development of the infrastructure, programmatic supports, and campus-level relationships necessary to facilitate the development of a robust student support network. Action research will be used to identify and develop stakeholder-driven interventions to support student success and sense of belonging. These interventions will be integrated into a future Track 3 S-STEM proposal that will provide financial, engineering identity, and wellness support for students. This project is funded by NSF’s S-STEM 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.