2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Supporting and Understanding Undergraduates' Computing Pathways Through the [ProgramName] S-STEM Program

This poster describes the findings of an NSF S-STEM scholarship program called ProgramName. [ProgramName] is a collaborative program across three partner institutions: [PartnerUniversities]. The project is recruiting a target number of 150 students (total) over a 5-year period (50 per partner institution). Our recruitment criteria are based on: (1) Junior-level students (transfer or non-transfer) with 60-89 credits; (2) major in Computer Science (CS), Information Technology (IT), Cybersecurity (Cyber), or Computer Engineering (CpE); and (3) minimum 3.0 Grade Point Average. Students are supported with S-STEM scholarship funding through to their graduation. Upon graduation, these students continue receiving funding through one year of graduate school should they enroll at [PartnerUniversities] to pursue a computer-related master’s degree. Beyond award funding, the primary support service for this project includes offering three pathways for students to pursue - internship, research, and/or entrepreneurship – and conducting an annual symposium for students to share their pathway experiences with their peers, industry partners, and faculty. In addition to the pathway experiences and annual symposium, this project also provides the following student support services and interventions: professional workshops (e.g., LinkedIn presence, resume and interview preparations), industry tours (in-person & virtual), mentoring (through pathway experiences), career air support, advanced degree information (e.g., graduate school workshops and funding opportunities), proactive advising (toward degree completion), shared online technical electives (between the 3 institutions), and cohort community (social activities, discord communications)

The knowledge generation component of the project includes interviews and surveys with ProgramName participants and observations of ProgramName programming. Findings have included the following: (1) The career paths we asked our student participants to consider are tradeoffs between forms of capital. For example, the risk of losing economic capital loomed large in considerations, and investment in the cultural capital of a graduate degree was not seen as an attractive tradeoff. (2) We found that students may lack certain relevant understandings of a particular pathway or have no foundational knowledge for deciding that a particular pathway is or is not for them. (3) For every 10 participants out of 36 participants in the survey, 6 of them chose industry/professional pathway, 3 of them were still undecided on their pathways, 1 of them chose graduate pathway, and none of them chose entrepreneurship. (4) Opportunities to advance in their career, job security and salary were the top factors that the participants would consider important while looking for a job in the future.

Evaluation of ProgramName by Evaluator considered the following questions: (1) to what extent is [ProgramName] successful in recruiting its targeted students?; (2) to what extent is [ProgramName] successful in retaining and graduating its students?; and (3) to what extent is [ProgramName]’s research activities being carried out and results disseminated as proposed? [ProgramName] recruited 41 S-STEM eligible students across PartnerUniversities during Year 1 of the grant. This represents 82 percent of the project’s annual recruitment goal. Recruitment challenges were primarily due to State policy changes that impacted students’ financial eligibility for the [ProgramName] scholarship. The three partners have spent significant time discussing recruitment strategies for Cohort 2. We surveyed students about program implementation, attendance, and students’ satisfaction and perceptions about the value of opportunities such as the orientation and annual showcase. [ProgramName] offered several hybrid, cross institutional events including the graduate school showcase, “Welcome Back” social, alumni panel, LinkedIn event, and industry panel event. These five virtual events were well attended and most appreciated among the 2021-2022 academic year offerings. 100 percent of students reported being very satisfied with their experiences at the hybrid events.