| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 10, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 6, 2019 |
| Award Number: | 1643780 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Mike Ferrara
mferrara@nsf.gov (703)292-2635 DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $4,795,499.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $4,795,499.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1523 UNION RD RM 207 GAINESVILLE FL US 32611-1941 (352)392-3516 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
FL US 32611-2002 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | S-STEM-Schlr Sci Tech Eng&Math |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
The Microbiology and Cell Science (MCS) Department at the University of Florida (UF) will partner with Miami Dade College (MDC), a primarily two-year degree granting institution in Florida and the largest minority-serving institution in the country, through the Florida Pathways to Success project. This project will provide scholarships to 400 academically talented and low income students who are in the two-year to four-year transfer pathway in the life sciences. To address the challenges of rapidly rising costs of higher education, stagnating income levels, and a critical shortfall of a highly skilled and diverse STEM workforce, MCS and MDC designed an innovative hybrid online transfer program to increase the retention of students who, for financial, familial, or other reasons, cannot relocate to the UF campus to complete their four-year degree. Transfer students are a diverse student population with a higher proportion of underrepresented minorities (URM), first generation students, veterans, working parents, women, older students and low-income students than non-transfer student populations. Despite their intention to earn an undergraduate degree, very few two-year students are retained and complete the B.S. degree pathway. The Florida Pathways project will use a transfer model that brings the MCS curriculum to the students and should therefore increase access to B.S. degrees while decreasing cost of attendance.
The intellectual merit will focus on research in biology education that contributes to the body of knowledge on the transfer pathway and distance education. Students in the online transfer track earn their two year A.A. degree from a community college and then transfer into UF as MCS majors. Over five years, this project will provide substantial scholarships to approximately 250 academically talented and low income students from MDC and 150 from other Florida community colleges. Students who are pre-transfer at MDC and/or post-transfer in the UF MCS program are eligible for support. In addition, Florida Pathways scholarship recipients will receive mentoring from faculty and will be eligible to participate in other evidence-based interventions such as peer-led tutoring and faculty-mentored summer research. MCS transfer students currently have graduation rates that are significantly lower than the rates of their non-transfer peers. This project aims to increase retention so that all MCS students, regardless of transfer status, graduate in a timely fashion, resulting in at least 60-90 B.S. degree graduates who otherwise would not have been retained in the STEM transfer pathway. The research will identify those academic and social factors that contribute to observed differences in retention and graduation rates. The analysis will be used to guide the design of future interventions for sustained success of our transfer population.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This S-STEM award had the long-term goal to strengthen the STEM workforce by increasing retention of an often overlooked, yet key STEM contingent: transfer students in the AA to BS pathway. To accomplish this goal, the Microbiology & Cell Science (MCS) department at UF partnered with Miami Dade College (MDC), a primarily 2-year minority-serving institution in Florida and the largest Hispanic-serving institution in the country. The intellectual merit of the project was to increase retention of transfer students by providing need-based scholarships and other high impact activities like undergraduate research to a projected 400 low-income students in the pre- and post-transfer stages of the 2+2 STEM pathway. The MCS program has an online and on-campus track for transfer students, which offers multiple pathways for student success. Transfer students have lower retention, are more likely to be low-income, women, parents, adult learners, and underrepresented minorities, all groups that face barriers in STEM. Therefore, the broader impacts of the project was to expand participation and access of URM and nontraditional students in STEM.
This award had several outcomes in support of its main goals. A total number of 446 unique academically-talented, low-income undergraduates were awarded $2.1 million in scholarships. Of these, 171 were post-transfer students at UF and 275 were pre-transfer (AA-seeking students) and MDC. Of all scholars at both institutions, 89% earned their respective AA or BS in STEM and an estimated 57% continued in the STEM enterprise (Table 1). For S-STEM scholars at UF who began as AA students, 78% earned a BS, and 82% of graduates continued in the STEM enterprise, either pursuing additional STEM education and/or entering the STEM workforce. Of MDC scholars, 96% completed their degree in STEM and 53% of graduates transferred and continued pursuing higher education in STEM. This completion rate for AA to BS students is significantly higher than the national trend in which only 14% of students who begin with an AA, transfer and complete a BS degree.
The project had significant impact on STEM students in the undergraduate transfer pathway. Analysis of a large historical dataset of all MCS students showed that S-STEM scholars were 2.2x more likely to be retained than students without the scholarship (p < 0.02). This completion rate for AA to BS students is significantly higher than the national trend in which only 14% of students who begin with an AA, transfer and complete a BS degree. The impact of the scholarship was greater for low-income students in the online track than in the on-campus track. These results on the impact of the scholarship are the subject of a manuscript in progress.
This award also met its goal to broaden participation in STEM. Sixty percent of the S-STEM students were female and 76% of the students were from racial/ethnic groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM. These rates of participation are higher than national trends in which URM representation in STEM is disproportionately low compared to population. Notably, unlike national trends, there is no retention gap between enrollment and completion among URM S-STEM students funded by this program.
Undergraduate research experience is a high impact practice that increases retention and success in STEM and some opportunities were directly supported through this grant. Over half of the UF S-STEM scholars participated in faculty-mentored research at UF and presented at an annual symposium organized by the Florida Pathways S-STEM program. The program developed a summer undergraduate research experience (SURE) model that emphasizes flexibility, access, and needs of low-income and transfer students. This model of a SURE has been disseminated in presentations and is the subject of a current manuscript in progress.
This S-STEM project also generated knowledge that has been shared through 5 peer-reviewed papers (4 published and one in submission): 1) compressed “bootcamp” lab format of lab courses are effective at broadening access (Ardissone, et al., 2019); 2) online modalities can increase participation of low-income, transfer students and other nontraditional students in STEM (Ardissone et al, 2020); 3) expanding scholarship eligibility to part-time students enhances equity and broadens participation for low-income students (Ardissone et al, 2021); 4) online modality buffered the negative impacts of pandemic disruptions for low-income transfers (Ardissone et al, 2023); and 5) online MS program expands access to STEM for students traditionally underrepresented in the STEM enterprise including low-income and rural students (in submission). And additional two manuscripts are in progress as described above. Over the life of the award, these methods and findings were shared through 22 presentations with multiple audiences including those interested in broadening participation in STEM, Microbiology education, and STEM discipline-based education research.
Last Modified: 12/21/2024
Modified by: Jennifer C Drew
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