2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Scholarships in Science Technology Engineering and Math (S-STEM) is a national program administered by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The purpose of the S-STEM program is to provide scholarships and programming to recruit, retain and graduate low-income scholars in STEM disciplines. S-STEM offers grants in three tracks: Track 1, Institutional Capacity Building; Track 2, Implementation by a Single Institution; and Track 3, Inter-Institutional Consortia. Currently, West Virginia University Institute of Technology (WVU Tech) has a Track 1 S-STEM project and is participating in an accelerator grant program administered by a Track 3 project at Virginia Tech.

Recruitment for S-STEM programs can be a challenge. To combat this challenge, the present study is part of a larger initiative to investigate intra-institutional partnerships and share findings broadly to help ensure that no eligible S-STEM scholars are overlooked in future S-STEM program recruitment efforts. Institutional partners at WVU Tech included the S-STEM principal investigators, financial aid, the Student Success Center where first year advising occurs, enrollment management where admissions is housed and university relations where marketing and communications is housed. The current study focused on efforts to recruit S-STEM scholars over two recruitment cycles.

To better understand current recruitment efforts, institutional partners and current S-STEM scholars responded to reflection prompts about their experience with recruitment. The sample included all institutional partners and 13 out of 14 scholars. The authors analyzed the written reflections using thematic content analysis with most findings relating to (1) factors in awareness and decision making, (2) reasons for applying, (3) hesitancies and potential barriers and (4) future opportunities and communication strategies. The study revealed that staff perspectives regarding what worked for students did not necessarily align with student perspectives. Students were informed and influenced both internally by institutional partners and externally by relatives and high school teachers. There was not one form of communication that was clearly most effective. Rather, each mode of communication (the website, emails, print materials and word of mouth) played an important role in reaching different groups of potential scholars. These and other findings from the study can provide guidance for future S-STEM and related programs to help ensure that partnerships are leveraged effectively, and recruitment efforts are successful.