2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The need to significantly increase the number of STEM innovators is well-documented and is one of the key focus areas for our university, our state, our country, and for NSF. This is especially true for low-income students who do not have the same opportunities to develop their innovation skills. The expected paths through extra-curricular activities, observing side-by-side with innovators, unpaid internships, mentorships, or being able to take additional courses beyond the requirements of their degrees are rarely available.

To address this, a 2-week undergraduate bridge program and two-semester first-year innovation courses
were developed, particularly focused on STEM majors from low-income backgrounds. The design uses innovation-based instruction, exercises, industry-experienced lecturers, field trips, and individual and team projects.

The researchers at the University of Arkansas, with funding from the NSF Division of Undergraduate Education (HER/DUE) of an S-STEM grant, have the objective of increasing the number of low-income students with innovation training and experience and graduating with a STEM degree.

The intersession course teaches students about the innovation process and gives them the opportunity to develop their innovative thinking and mindset. Two credit hours of the three-credit-hour course are devoted to innovation and one credit hour is devoted to student success approaches and becoming a welcomed member of the university community. Mentoring activities and cohort building are part of the Honors College Path Program which is designed to increase the retention of underrepresented students.

The two-semester first-year innovation course that follows provides a full-year reinforcement of the students’ learning and experiences from the intersession into an expanded innovation experience with additional honors engineering and honors business students. These combined teams have additional innovation process lectures, assignments, and in-class active learning experiences in the first semester. Near the end of the first semester, they form teams, identify an innovative product or service as their project, and at semester end, they present their written and oral proposal. In the second semester, they follow the processes learned in the first semester to develop their proposal into a proof-of-concept or prototype and participate in a year-end symposium with a presentation and poster.

We also discuss the results from iterative improvements made to the second intersession and the second two-semester courses based on the feedback from the first intersession student responses and researchers’ retrospectives.