2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A research and mentoring program was developed to provide local first-generation students, students returning to school after a professional experience, and underrepresented minority students resources and relationships to guide them toward a STEM degree from a four-year university. These students typically do not pursue research experiences due to lack of awareness and confidence conducting advanced STEM research. A multi-tiered mentoring community was formed including direct mentoring from graduate students and faculty advisors, peer mentoring among undergraduate students from different colleges and universities, and high school students to increase the accessibility of research opportunities for this demographic. The program mirrored a traditional Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) summer research format, then added mentoring sessions for the local students during the academic year that REU programs typically lack. Local undergraduate students were recruited from Northwest Arkansas Community College and rising high school seniors were recruited from the University of Arkansas Upward Bound program to combine community college and high school students in a novel manner. High school students had the chance to complete educational experiments and the community college students joined different University of Arkansas research labs. The programs were combined whenever possible to emphasize peer mentoring, including mentoring lunches, research meetings, presentation sessions, conference presentations, and professional development mentoring sessions. On the post-program survey, students indicated the community formed in the program supported their research identity development, provided them with quality relationships, and developed skills valuable to completion of a STEM degree. No significant differences in scores were observed between community college and high school programs, genders, races, and first-generation students. The majority of the students, including eight of ten community college students who regularly engaged with the program after the summer research, participating in this program pursued additional research at a four-year university or internship opportunities after participating in the program. Two of six high school students have decided to pursue engineering at the University of Arkansas and attribute their decision to their experience in the program. The post-program scores and continued efforts of different demographics of students to pursue STEM highlight the versatility of the multi-tiered mentoring community model to serve students from different ages, backgrounds, backgrounds and demographics.