2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 351: NSF S-STEM Track 3: Scaling Up Student Success through Broadening Participation Beyond our S-STEM Cohort

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

A Track 3 NSF S-STEM project, the Urban STEM Collaboratory awards scholarships to undergraduate engineering students at three urban public research universities. Each university employed a unique intervention to support student success, and each has demonstrated positive student outcomes. This poster will share plans to scale up each intervention after termination of the S-STEM grant.
Institution #1 integrated its STEM Ambassador program as a component of the Urban STEM Collaboratory, providing priority consideration to students within the cohort for STEM Ambassador positions. The program engages undergraduate students in paid positions supporting STEM teaching and learning with local school districts and community organizations. Ambassadors develop strong leadership and communication skills and deeper connections to their disciplines all while getting paid and making a positive impact in the community. The program has been successful in creating connections and a sense of community for the Ambassadors that has led to positive outcomes in both academic and career pursuits. The leadership team is now exploring opportunities to extend these successes with other populations where a strong sense of community can lead to better retention outcomes, such as community college and other transfer students, and greater success in recruiting students from a local HBCU to graduate STEM programs at Institution #1.

In the Engineering Learning Community (ELC) at Institution #2, first-year engineering students take three classes together: math, English, and first-year design innovations. The ELC began in Fall 2016 with mostly mechanical engineering students. In Fall 2019, the first S-STEM scholarships were awarded and the ELC included students from a variety of engineering majors. In the ELC, students build community and increase their sense of belonging at a primarily commuter campus. Through the S-STEM project, the ELC has grown to continue into students’ second semester of math and English, as well as to include a peer mentorship program. The demonstrated success of the ELC has increased buy-in from campus leadership to scale up the project to create additional, expanded learning communities for all first-year engineering students.
Institution #3 piloted Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) in Calculus 1 recitation sections specifically for students in the Urban STEM cohort. PLTL pairs small groups of students with a student mentor who has recently taken the class who facilitates hands-on team-based problem-solving. PLTL is well-established in introductory Chemistry classes at Institution #3 and has previously been employed in some sophomore-level engineering courses with high rates of D, F, or Withdrawal (DFW) grades. The Urban STEM intervention, the first attempt to offer PLTL in Institution #3 math classes, was an overwhelming success: both Urban STEM cohorts showed significantly lower DFW rates in Calculus 1 compared to students not engaged in PLTL, including no failing grades (compared to a 13.5% failure rate for non-PLTL participants). Building on that success, we have continued to expand PLTL in key sophomore engineering classes and have plans to expand into a sophomore Computer Information Technology class. We are also laying the groundwork for future opportunities to support PLTL in foundational mathematics courses that support engineering students.

Authors

Dr. Maryam Darbeheshti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7988-0906 University of Colorado, Denver [biography]

Dr. Maryam Darbeheshti is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado, Denver. She is the PI of a recent NSF award that focuses on STEM identity at Urban Universities.
Darbeheshti's primary research is in the area of Engineering Education and Multi-phase fluid flow.
Miriam Howland Cummings PhD http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8653-4489 University of Colorado, Denver [biography]

Miriam Howland Cummings is a mixed methods social science researcher. She earned a BA from Rice University and recently completed a PhD from the University of Colorado Denver while serving as a graduate research assistant for the Urban STEM Collaboratory. Dr. Howland Cummings' research focuses on engineering education, K-12 education, and the measurement of latent constructs.
William Taylor Schupbach [biography]

William is working towards a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Denver and is a research assistant and a part time instructor.
Dr. David J. Russomanno Indiana University - Purdue University, Indianapolis [biography]

David J. Russomanno is provost at The University of Memphis. He was formerly dean of the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI.
Dr. Stephanie S Ivey The University of Memphis [biography]

Dr. Stephanie Ivey is the Associate Dean for Research with the Herff College of Engineering and a Professor with the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Memphis. She directs the U of Mâ€™s Southeast Transportation Workforce Center and th
Dr. Karen D Alfrey Indiana University - Purdue University, Indianapolis [biography]

Karen Alfrey is a Clinical Associate Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Academic Affairs and Programs in the School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI. She has been a member of ASEE since 2003.
Prof. Tom Altman [biography]

Tom Altman received his B.S. degrees in Computer Science and in Mathematics, and M.S. and Ph.D. (1984) in Computer Science, all from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Altman specializes in optimization algorithms, formal language theory, and complex syste
Dr. Michael S. Jacobson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0255-6507 University of Colorado Denver [biography]

Dr. Mike Jacobson received his B.S. in Mathematics from the State University of New York @ Stony Brook in 1975. He completed his MS and PhD. In Mathematics at Emory University in 1977 and 1980, respectively. Dr. Jacobson’s mathematics specialization is Graph Theory and Combinatorics. He also has been actively involved in training pre-service and in-service teachers. He joined CU Denver in 2003 as Professor and Chair, after spending 23 years at the University of Louisville as Assistant, Associate and Professor, Chair, as well as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies. Dr. Jacobson has published over 150 journal, conference, and technical papers. He has been a recipient, as PI or co-PI, of numerous research awards, including awards from the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation (in both Mathematical Sciences and Education and Human Resources).
Craig O. Stewart http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-6843-795X University of Memphis
Prof. Katherine Goodman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5235-3372 University of Colorado, Denver [biography]

Katherine Goodman is associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, and curriculum lead at Inworks, an interdisciplinary innovation lab. Her research focuses on transformative experiences in engineering education. She has served as program chair and division chair of the Technological and Engineering Literacy - Philosophy of Engineering (TELPhE) Division.

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