Leveraging S-STEM Scholarship Programs
Mary Anderson-Rowland, Armando A. Rodriguez, Richard Hall, Phil McBride, Rakesh Pangasa, John Saber, Clark Vangilder, Anita Grierson
Abstract
Abstract Leveraging S-STEM Scholarship Programs AbstractWith increasing tuition fees, more and more students are finding themselves unable to meet thefinancial needs of college. Engineering and computer science are difficult majors and studentsmajoring in these fields find that if they have to work while going to school, the task is evenmore difficult. It often takes five years for students to graduate and many students find itdifficult to continue to take loans in order to stay in school. It is not uncommon to find that 80%of the students at a large university need financial help. The National Science Foundation is wellaware of the critical need for more engineers in the United States and the need for the availabilityof more scholarships to help support engineering students. However, just providing money tostudents does not ensure their success.This paper describes how a major university has leveraged NSF S-STEM grants (0807134,0728695, and 1060226) with an NSF STEP grant (0856834) to produce a highly successfulprogram focused on retention, graduation, and graduate degrees. The current system was begunin 2002 with an S-STEM grant (Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research Community – CIRC)for upper division and graduate engineering and computer science students. In 2003, an S-STEM grant for upper division transfer students was begun (CIRC/METS – MotivatedEngineering Transfer Students). Feeding into the CIRC program was an S-STEM program forlower division engineering, computer science, and mathematics students. In 2009, scholarshipswere added to the program for students from five non-metropolitan community colleges throughthe STEP grant already mentioned.The students in the above programs receive $4,000 scholarships per academic year. The studentsin the upper division S-STEM programs must be full-time students in engineering and computerscience. Mathematics students are also accepted from the lower division S-STEM program. Thestudents must be US citizens or permanent residents, have a 3.0 GPA, and have unmet financialneed according to FAFSA. Since there are more qualified students who apply for thescholarships than there are scholarships, additional students can earn a $300 scholarship for atotal of two semesters by completing an Academic Success Class that is required of thescholarship holders.The students in the lower division S-STEM meet six times a year for their own program. All ofthe upper division and graduate students meet together six times a year with a choice of fivemeetings times (three on a Thursday and two on a Friday) in order to accommodate all of theirschedules. The programming will be described in the paper.These programs have attained a 90-95% retention rate. For upper division transfer students notin the program, the graduation rate is about 70% for males and 64% for females. The transferGPA shock was shown to be negligent for new program transfer students, compared with a halfgrade point drop for new upper division transfer students not in the program. And, mostimportantly, during the past three years, 50% of the graduated scholarship students have goneright on to graduate school full-time. Several of the students are now in PhD programs preparingto become professors.