2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Purpose: The purpose of the Leveraging Innovation and Optimizing Nurturing in STEM Program (NSF S-STEM #2130022, known locally as LION STEM Scholars) is to support the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income engineering scholars with demonstrated financial need at Penn State Berks, a four-year regional undergraduate campus within the larger Pennsylvania State University. Scholars are part of a multi-tiered mentoring program and cohort experience. The LION STEM curricular programs include a math-intensive summer bridge program, a first semester First-Year Seminar, and a second semester STEM-Persistence Seminar. Co-curricular activities focus on professional communication skills, financial literacy, career readiness, undergraduate research, and community engagement. The overall project uses the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017), to examine the integrative nature of how Low-Income/College-Student/Future-Engineer role identities contribute to STEM identity for low-income Engineering students. This paper presents data collected from semi-structured (Smith & Osborn, 2007) audio-recorded interviews from the first cohort of LION STEM Scholars (n=4) at three different time points (pre-summer bridge, post-summer bridge, end of first semester) as well as data collected from a written survey at the end of each Scholar’s second semester.

Goals: The LION STEM Scholars program at Penn State Berks seeks to accomplish four goals: (1) adapt, implement, and analyze evidence-based curricular and co-curricular activities to support, retain, and graduate a diverse set of the project's engineering scholars, (2) implement, test, and study through research and project evaluation strategies for systematically supporting student academic and career pathways in STEM, including development of STEM identity, (3) contribute to the knowledge base through investigation of the project's four-year multi-modal program so that other colleges may successfully implement similar programs, and (4) disseminate outcomes and findings related to the supports and interventions that promote student success to other institutions working to support low-income STEM students.

The goal of this paper is to analyze data from a repeated-measures design to provide a holistic narrative about the effects that the academic and support activities offered to LION STEM Scholars have on the development of their Future-Engineer role identity throughout their first year as an undergraduate engineering student. The theoretical framework for this project is the DSMRI, a holistic metatheoretical framework for motivation, engagement and learning through identity development. Specifically, this paper will explore the ontological and epistemological beliefs, purpose and goals, self-perceptions and self-definitions, and perceived-action possibilities for the Future-Engineer role identities of the LION STEM Scholars throughout their first year of college.

Method: Audio-recorded interviews were conducted and transcribed from each of n=4 students from the first cohort of LION STEM Scholars at three points in time: (1) pre-summer bridge; (2) post-summer bridge; (3) end of first semester. In addition, a written
survey was also given to the scholars at the end of their second semester. Taken together, this repeated-measures design will form the basis for an interpretative phenomenological analysis, which is an in-depth exploration of how a participant perceives and makes sense of their personal and social world. Specifically, analysis will involve identifying superordinate themes across the narratives of all scholars, which will provide valuable insight on the development of Future-Engineer identity for high-achieving, low-income first year engineering students.

Results: Data analysis is being conducted currently.

Conclusions: Conclusions are pending following completion of data analysis.