2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Alternative Pathways to Excellence (APEX) program at the University of St. Thomas is an NSF funded S-STEM Track 2 project that seeks to strengthen efforts to recruit and retain STEM transfer students by integrating financial, academic, and practical supports.

The APEX program provides student support services, formal and informal mentoring, curricular and co-curricular supports, and cohort building activities all formulated to create accessible pathways into engineering careers for a population of academically talented students with low income and high unmet financial need.

The goals of this program are to increase recruitment by partnering with five regional community colleges, to award S-STEM scholarships of up to $10,000 annually to cohorts of 4-6 students each year, to increase retention by developing retention-friendly supports, and to graduate APEX scholars who go on to meaningfully contribute to fueling innovation in industry and/or academic post-graduate study.

Generation of knowledge is based on studying the APEX program as a model and evaluating qualitative and quantitative data surrounding students’ successful transitions to a four-year institution. Program evaluation is focused on understanding how well APEX recruitment strategies contribute to increasing the number of low income and underrepresented students who transfer into the University of St. Thomas Engineering program and understanding the extent to which retention efforts are most beneficial to retaining students. In this work, we showcase initial program activities, and the initial results based on the first year of study and our first cohort of scholars.