2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Community colleges are critical to increasing access to higher education. Forty-three percent of students are enrolled at a two-year institution (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2018) and these students are likely to come from marginalized communities (e.g. first-generation college students, racial/ethnic minorities; Price & Tovar, 2014). Additionally, students often attend community colleges by being enrolled part-time and have added responsibilities (e.g. commuting to campus, family, multiple jobs, etc; Cohen & Brawer, 2008; Gonzalez, 2000).
The National Science foundation (NSF) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Program (S-STEM) supports low-income, academically talented Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students with demonstrated financial need through a scholarship program that provides financial support and also allows for the institutions to develop or enhance curricular/co-curricular activities and interventions with the hope of retaining and graduating this diverse group in STEM fields (e.g. S-STEM; National Science Foundation, 2021; Rodriguez et al., 2021). Yet studies of S-STEM programs tend to be more common in four-year institutions, small, and focus on one or a handful of campuses in a consortium. Hence, little overall understanding of the features S-STEM programs at community colleges exist, especially how they support student-decision making to stay in a STEM program.
Through this systematic literature review, the team examines the literature on community colleges and the S-STEM program. This review focused on documenting, gathering, and summarizing the universe of information exploring NSF S-STEM in community colleges. The research team used four databases: ProQuest, Compendex, EBSCOHost, PsychInfo, and ASEE Conference Repository (ASEE peer document repository) to examine peer-reviewed literature on community colleges and their use of S-STEM funding. Additionally, the team conducted searches in prominent community college journals: Community College Review, Community College Journal of Research and Practice, New Directions for Community Colleges, and Journal of Applied Research in the Community College.
For this systematic review, the team bound the study in (1) peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings published between 2013-2023 (present), (2) must be full-text, and (3) U.S. focused. Within these bounds, the team searched various term pairings that focused on “community college,” “S-STEM,” “National Science Foundation (NSF),” and their variations. The two main searches that center this systematic literature review were “S-STEM and Community colleges'' and “NSF and Community Colleges.” “S-STEM and Community colleges'' revealed 81 results and “NSF and Community Colleges” revealed 237 results. Of these 318 results, we have retrieved 36 peer reviewed publications that incorporate the emphasis of this study and meet all the criteria described. This is an ongoing study as we continue to triangulate for duplicates through the rest of the searches.
There are three major themes that have emerged: (1) the importance of intentional programmatic support systems for STEM success, (2) an emphasis on faculty mentoring, enhanced advising, and building STEM communities (3) the information sources that influence STEM decision-making in the community college for career or post community college experiences. Although these findings are important, there are also areas of future work that are needed to be emphasized for community college and decision-making pathways for students involved with the S-STEM program.