2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Commonly, college students who come from low-income households are the first generation to pursue a college degree (Gennel, 2017). These college students face multiple barriers that they must navigate with the limited possibility or potential for family support beyond encouragement (Hebert, 2017). While families may be very supportive of their students attending college, the complexity of academic content, degree requirements, achievement expectations, securing academic support, and connecting with others at the institution are likely to be very unfamiliar and, therefore, very challenging to provide support to achieve success (Engle & Tinto, 2008). To address this issue, we submitted a proposal for a National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) award. We received the award and admitted our first and second cohorts of 17 and 18 students, respectively, in Fall 2024 and Fall 2025. We designed the program to provide scholarships and support for four years per cohort.

The focus of our S-STEM program goes beyond providing financial support for engineering students. Our program addresses a range of needs unique to low-income, first-generation college students (Means & Pyne, 2017). In particular, we embraced the significant role that faculty members play in college student success, particularly for first-generation students who can not rely on family members to understand their academic challenges (McCallen & Johnson, 2020). Considering the first two years of college experience significantly impact students’ professional foundation for their future engineering careers, our project focuses on building self-confidence and belonging to address their academic challenges and the support needed to effectively navigate their college education.

Additionally, we have incorporated multiple high-impact practices (Conefrey, 2021; Gregg, 2019), which include:
* building a community of S-STEM scholars to support each other and work together;
* providing academic and professional mentoring, including academic advising;
* strengthening professional relationships among engineering faculty members and the student scholars;
* creating opportunities for the students to be more involved in professional engineering activities, such as research and attending conferences.

To determine the impact of the program on the selected scholars, we collected qualitative and quantitative data from the first cohort of S-STEM scholars. The initial trend revealed our initiatives are having a notable impact on the students’ identities as scholars, their academic success, their knowledge of engineering, their commitment to continuing their academic pursuit, and their sense of community.
In our poster, we will present details of the structure of our program and the impact we are having on the students’ academic success, identities, and persistence as engineering majors.

References
Conefrey, T. (2021). Supporting first-generation students’ adjustment to college with high-impact practices. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 23(1), 139-160.
Engle, J., & Tinto, V. (2008). Moving beyond access: College success for low-income, first-generation students. Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.
Gemmel, T. A. (2017). Transition to college for low-income first-generation college students (Doctoral dissertation, Fordham University).
Hébert, T. P. (2018). An examination of high-achieving first-generation college students from low-income backgrounds. Gifted Child Quarterly, 62(1), 96-110.
McCallen, L. S., & Johnson, H. L. (2020). The role of institutional agents in promoting higher education success among first-generation college students at a public urban university. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 13(4), 320-332.
Means, D. R., & Pyne, K. B. (2017). Finding my way: Perceptions of institutional support and belonging in low-income, first-generation, first-year college students. Journal of College Student Development, 58(6), 907-924.