NSF Award
2130321
The 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 Rice University, Texas Southern University, Prairie View A&M University, and Jackson State University. Across all four partner institutions, the project will support roughly 220 academically talented domestic students from low-income backgrounds with demonstrated financial need to pursue and complete master's degrees in engineering, computer science, mathematics and data science. Students will select from among disciplines in one of three technical tracks: biotechnology; sustainability and resilience; and digital twinning. (The latter refers to the use of a virtual model of a system that is updated with real-time data and used to support simulations and decision making.) The core of the project is a carefully crafted combination of scholarships, academic and career development, mentoring, and cohort development based on preliminary student data and the literature on scholar success and workforce development. The programmatic elements are structured to remove barriers and to foster students’ successful matriculation, graduation, and entry into the workforce. Rather than focus on traditional education models that often set up a dichotomy between research experiences and internships that lead to singular career paths, the Flexible Internships-Research-Education (FIRE) model employed here is designed to give students experiences that integrate both research and internships, facilitated by workforce partners, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Towards this end an important component of the project is a partnership with the Engineer Research and Development Center, a major employer specializing in civil and military engineering, geospatial sciences, water resources, and environmental sciences.<br/><br/>The objectives of this project are to: (1) increase the number of domestic low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need obtaining master’s degrees and entering the US STEM workforce in areas of critical need; (2) implement and evaluate the impact of the FIRE model on student success; and (3) implement, study, and disseminate a multiteam systems model for collaboration toward career and educational development. Scholars will be part of multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional cohorts based on their year of matriculation as well as their chosen technical tracks and will be mentored by faculty and practitioners. The project’s mixed-method research plan is guided by three principal research questions centered on better understanding how multi-institutional teams function. First, how do the varied norms, values, and priorities of individuals in different disciplines/organizations manifest in teamwork issues such as communication and work style differences? Second, how does the overall organizational culture interact with that from each discipline or team within the multiteam system, and how does the blended culture impact conflict resolution? Finally, how do leadership structures and institutional or team-level conditions support collaboration and progress towards team goals, in this case successful academic outcomes for scholars? Major data sources include interviews, surveys of scholars and leadership team members, and measures of student success. Project materials, findings and outcomes will be disseminated widely to the STEM education community. 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.<br/><br/>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.
