United States

Introduction. Community colleges serve a large proportion of underrepresented minority, first-generation and low-income students and so are ideally positioned to identify potential STEM students (Ma and Baum, 2016). Data also indicates that community college students, even academically talented STEM students, may be underprepared for college success due to limited financial resources, first-generation college student status, or lack of knowledge about STEM-related options in academia and work. In the COVID-19 global pandemic context, challenges are greater, with students reporting delayed graduation (13%), lost jobs, internships or job offers (40%), and expecting to earn less at age 35 (29%) (Acujeo et. al 2020). In STEM too, a majority of undergraduates whose Spring 2020 STEM courses shifted from in-person to remote instruction due to COVID-19 struggled significantly (Means and Neisler, 2020). Increasing evidence suggests that unified, holistic supportive services attuned to individual student needs while promoting integration provide greater benefits to community college students, especially underrepresented minority, first-generation and low-income students, and results in better outcomes as measured by persistence (overall and in STEM) and transfer (Cooper et al., 2014; Kolenvic et al., 2103; Shadduck, 2017). 

This study examines 2 years of data collected on the STEM Scholars program at Oakton Community College during academic years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, which offered novel programming to serve this underrepresented segment of Oakton students, to examine the critical role that unified holistic support services can play in low income, academically talented underrepresented minority and female STEM students&#39; persistence to degree and in STEM in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods. We analyzed quantitative data collected from 19 STEM Scholar enrollments and data from Oakton&#39;s Office of Research and Planning establishing a control group, consisting of 1,144 full-time and part-time students that first enrolled for fall 2019 and fall 2020 who have taken certain STEM-related courses while scoring at least 300 on math placement exams. We also used qualitative data software analysis tool Atlas.ti to code and analyze qualitative data including participant surveys from 3 different time points for each of 2 cohorts, yearly 1-on-1 interviews with Scholars, a survey and focus group with Scholar mentors, STEM Scholars program records and interviews with STEM Scholars Leaders.

Results. In the COVID-19 context, financial support and unified, holistic support services played an essential role in helping STEM Scholars persist. In particular, among Hispanic/Latinx STEM Scholars, persistence rates were 10% greater from fall 2019 to spring 2020 compared to the control group. Persistence rates for the same group of Hispanic/Latinx STEM Scholars increased to 20% when considering fall 2019 to fall 2020 persistence as compared to Oakton Hispanic/Latinx STEM students not a part of the STEM Scholars Program. Among female participants in the STEM Scholars Program, we find that while their fall 2019 to spring 2020 persistence rates increased by 10% compared to the control group, this trend did not apply to fall 2019 to fall 2020 as their persistence rates were similar to their Oakton STEM counterparts (persistence rates of 60% and 61, respectively). 100% of cohort 2 Scholars persisted fall 2020 to spring 2021. 

Conclusions and Discussion. Financial support and unified, holistic supportive services did not address every challenge STEM Scholars faced, but helped identify problems before they became roadblocks to persistence. Such resource intensive support is not easily scalable, however we suggest mechanisms and institutional changes to more fully support future cohorts of STEM students. 

Acknowledgments. Research was supported by an S-STEM grant provided by The National Science Foundation and Oakton Community College.

13th Conference on Understanding Interventions 2021

Persisting Despite COVID-19 Disruptions: Persistence of Low income, Academically Talented Latinx and Female STEM Community College Students Receiving Financial Support and Unified, Holistic, Supportive Services

persistence

undergraduate

community college

stem

covid-19

The annual UI conference has grown from a meeting to a community of more than 6,000 researchers, program officers, evaluators, program directors, training faculty, and others within STEM, and now operates with a mission to mutually inform scholarship and practice, develop and enhance the community interested in educational interventions, and provide professional development for all STEM persons. UI held its first Virtual conference in December of 2020 in response to Covid-19 restrictions that forced the cancellation of the original March 2020 in person meeting. Born out of necessity, the virtual conference introduced a format that provided pre conference availability of symposia, Deeper Dives and Poster presentations. The 13th Annual Understanding Interventions Conference will continue with that design and we foresee future conferences adopting aspects of that format in reaching a virtual audience as well as those who attend the conferences in-person.

Attendees will experience plenaries, workshops, symposia, and poster presentations on hypothesis-based research on interventions and initiatives that broaden participation in STEM careers. The conference will continue to facilitate the dialogue among education, behavioral, and social science researchers, evaluators, and faculty in STEM fields who participate in intervention programs. Graduate students in these fields are strongly encouraged to attend. Workshops, sessions, and posters will communicate effective strategies from successful STEM intervention programs, present results from empirical research studies, and synthesize the translation of research findings into practice on STEM learning, undergraduate research, graduate education, and student retention.

The cost to attend the conference is $150. There are special rates for post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, as well as conference grants that can be provided for those with need. Registration for the conference is open, with additional information to come.

The annual UI conference has grown from a meeting to a community of more than 6,000 researchers, program officers, evaluators, program directors, training faculty, and others within STEM, and now operates with a mission to mutually inform scholarship and practice, develop and enhance the community interested in educational interventions, and provide professional development for all STEM persons. 

Introduction. Community colleges serve a large proportion of underrepresented minority, first-generation and low-income students and so are ideally positioned to identify potential STEM students (Ma and Baum, 2016). Data also indicates that community college students, even academically talented STEM students, may be underprepared for college success due to limited financial resources, first-generation college student status, or lack of knowledge about STEM-related options in academia and work. In the COVID-19 global pandemic context, challenges are greater, with students reporting delayed graduation (13%), lost jobs, internships or job offers (40%), and expecting to earn less at age 35 (29%) (Acujeo et. al 2020). In STEM too, a majority of undergraduates whose Spring 2020 STEM courses shifted from in-person to remote instruction due to COVID-19 struggled significantly (Means and Neisler, 2020). Increasing evidence suggests that unified, holistic supportive services attuned to individual student needs while promoting integration provide greater benefits to community college students, especially underrepresented minority, first-generation and low-income students, and results in better outcomes as measured by persistence (overall and in STEM) and transfer (Cooper et al., 2014; Kolenvic et al., 2103; Shadduck, 2017). 

This study examines 2 years of data collected on the STEM Scholars program at Oakton Community College during academic years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, which offered novel programming to serve this underrepresented segment of Oakton students, to examine the critical role that unified holistic support services can play in low income, academically talented underrepresented minority and female STEM students' persistence to degree and in STEM in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods. We analyzed quantitative data collected from 19 STEM Scholar enrollments and data from Oakton's Office of Research and Planning establishing a control group, consisting of 1,144 full-time and part-time students that first enrolled for fall 2019 and fall 2020 who have taken certain STEM-related courses while scoring at least 300 on math placement exams. We also used qualitative data software analysis tool Atlas.ti to code and analyze qualitative data including participant surveys from 3 different time points for each of 2 cohorts, yearly 1-on-1 interviews with Scholars, a survey and focus group with Scholar mentors, STEM Scholars program records and interviews with STEM Scholars Leaders.

Results. In the COVID-19 context, financial support and unified, holistic support services played an essential role in helping STEM Scholars persist. In particular, among Hispanic/Latinx STEM Scholars, persistence rates were 10% greater from fall 2019 to spring 2020 compared to the control group. Persistence rates for the same group of Hispanic/Latinx STEM Scholars increased to 20% when considering fall 2019 to fall 2020 persistence as compared to Oakton Hispanic/Latinx STEM students not a part of the STEM Scholars Program. Among female participants in the STEM Scholars Program, we find that while their fall 2019 to spring 2020 persistence rates increased by 10% compared to the control group, this trend did not apply to fall 2019 to fall 2020 as their persistence rates were similar to their Oakton STEM counterparts (persistence rates of 60% and 61, respectively). 100% of cohort 2 Scholars persisted fall 2020 to spring 2021. 

Conclusions and Discussion. Financial support and unified, holistic supportive services did not address every challenge STEM Scholars faced, but helped identify problems before they became roadblocks to persistence. Such resource intensive support is not easily scalable, however we suggest mechanisms and institutional changes to more fully support future cohorts of STEM students. 

Acknowledgments. Research was supported by an S-STEM grant provided by The National Science Foundation and Oakton Community College.

symposium

BUILD (BUilding Infrastructure Leading to Diversity) is a NIH-funded program aimed to promote diversity in the biomedical and behavioral sciences by engaging and retaining undergraduate students of diverse backgrounds in health-related research. New and returning undergraduates (N = 40) in the one to two-year research program participate in a Summer Undergraduate Research Gateway to Excellence (SURGE) program for eight weeks in three cohorts. The goal of SURGE for students new to the program (junior “Year 1 Scholars” and senior “Fellows”) is to help trainees to develop cohesive cohorts, to acclimate them to their research environment and faculty mentor’s research, and to develop their science identity and sense of belonging as a researcher; and for returning students (“Year 2 Scholars”) is to prepare them for applying to graduate programs in the fall. SURGE is led by doctoral level University staff and faculty as well as Graduate Mentors (Master's students). From 2014-2019, SURGE was an in-person once or twice weekly experience. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with ongoing racial injustice which impacted students and the personnel who work with them (Lederer et al., 2020). The program’s training team immediately pivoted to address the challenges that the pandemic and racial injustice produced. The resulting intervention took the form of multiple modifications to the SURGE program. 

The primary purpose of this descriptive case study is to describe the modifications while another team of researchers will present outcomes in a companion submission (See Psychosocial impacts of COVID-19 and racial injustice on undergraduate summer research experience trainees). The case study will provide background information on the program, its participants, and the SURGE model that preceded the pandemic and the heightening of racial injustice. Next it will present the problem by outlining the challenges which emerged simultaneously for students (e.g., personal loss, loss of sense of community, financial and emotional stress, academic and personal uncertainty) and the program (e.g., lack of research availability, loss of family involvement in BUILD, technology issues). To address those challenges, program personnel made significant modifications to SURGE that included adapting SURGE content to virtual format, adding new culturally sustaining activities, facilitating safe space discussions, selecting student representatives for weekly feedback, developing alternative research activities for students whose research was halted, and others (Kreiger, 2020). The authors argue that the program modifications became the intervention for supporting students during a pandemic and time of ongoing racial injustice. 

Our presentation will describe the modifications and detail the methods (steps) we took to implement them, during a period of persistent personal and programmatic uncertainty and upheaval. Discussion will include lessons learned such as the importance of developing contingent plans for the future, centering student voices when faced with unprecedented challenges, continued use of virtual and/or hybrid program delivery, and developing a sense of community for students in virtual settings. Lessons learned will inform recommendations for those who work with undergraduates from diverse backgrounds, along with reflections about ongoing challenges, areas for improvement, and additional questions that program personnel need to consider. 
References. 

Kreiger, N. (2020). ENOUGH: COVID-19, structural racism, police brutality, plutocracy, climate change—and time for health justice, democratic governance, and an equitable, sustainable future. American Journal of Public Health, 110(11), 1620-1623. 
Lederer, A.M., Hoban, M.T., Lipson, S.K., Zhou, S. & Eisenberg, D. (2020, October 31). More than inconvenienced: The unique needs of U.S. college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198120969372 




Reflections on CSULB BUILD Program Response to COVID-19 and Racial Injustice: A Descriptive Case Study

A primary motivation for this study was to compare student perceptions and performance within a virtual learning environment to the traditional in-person learning experience at Xavier. In this article, we present quantitative and qualitative analyses of the General Chemistry II course offered during the five-week summer sessions. Furthermore, we compare student performance on exams during the COVID-19 remote learning experience with exam performance over a 3-year period of conventional in-person instruction. In this article, we outline student grades, survey feedback, and learning outcomes. This study was performed to assist us in improving and enriching the course contents and its delivery, as we cope with the transition to a virtual learning environment imposed by the COVID-19 Pandemic

Students Grade Evaluation, Survey Feedback, and Lessons Learned During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparative Study of Virtual vs. In-Person Offering of Freshman-Level General Chemistry II Course in Summer at Xavier University of Louisiana as a symposium

In this presentation, the symposium chair introduces the focus of the symposium, which is on factors related to the success of students transitioning to four year institutions, either directly from high school or through transfer from community college. She briefly describes the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation as one of several programs designed to facilitate underrepresented students' postsecondary educational success in STEM fields, and ends by introducing the two speakers, Dr. Peter Riley Bahr and Dr. Kolby Gadd.

Predictors of student transitional success in a STEM pipeline program: Lessons learned from one LSAMP

Objective: Community colleges have considerable potential to grow the number of individuals who complete STEM baccalaureate degrees and to improve the equal distribution of educational opportunity in STEM. However, efforts to tap this potential have been hampered by nagging questions about whether community colleges prepare students adequately for advanced STEM courses at universities. In this study, we draw on data from four universities in Michigan to investigate differences in the course and degree outcomes of students who completed prerequisite STEM courses in community colleges versus students who completed prerequisites at the university. Methods: We use logistic and linear regression to control for several potentially confounding variables, including academic achievement as measured by high school grade point average. Results: In three of the universities, we found no consistent evidence of weaker outcomes among students who completed STEM prerequisites at community colleges or among transfer students generally. In the fourth university, students taking STEM prerequisites in a community college had weaker course outcomes than did non-transfer students. Intersecting qualitative evidence points to differences in levels of support for transfer students as a likely explanation for the differences in students’ outcomes, rather than inadequate rigor of community college STEM coursework. Conclusion: Our findings generally align with prior evidence of minor or inconsistent differences in outcomes for students who previously attended a community college, but also point to the probable role of institutional factors at universities in influencing the chances of success among students who utilize community college to complete STEM coursework.

Transfer Pathways to STEM Degrees: Do community colleges prepare students for success in university stem courses?

Interest plays a major role in STEM motivation. Our research is based in introductory biology classes for pre-health majors, where students start out with high levels of interest. The course is challenging, however, and we test interventions (based in expectancy-value theory [Eccles & Wigfield, 2002]) to help underrepresented students perform better. Both competence beliefs and values are critically important, but we intervene on value, and test competence beliefs as moderators. Different outcomes reflect different motivational processes, and we use different measures to study students' performance in gateway science classes and persistence in STEM. We know that these value-focused interventions can promote students' performance and engagement in the targeted biology classes (Harackiewicz et al., 2016). We have now begun to analyze long-term follow-up data from biology students in order to shed light on intervention processes and inform the design of future interventions (Harackiewicz & Priniski, 2018).

First, we conducted a two-year follow-up of a utility-value intervention (UVI) with 1039 students, examining subsequent course-taking and whether students had chosen biomedical majors. The original study (Harackiewicz et al., 2016) had found that the UVI improved course grades for all students, as well as for underrepresented students, by promoting engagement. In the follow-up (Hecht et al., 2019), students who were more confident that they could succeed in the course were more likely to persist in biomedical fields if they had received the UVI (a classic expectancy-value effect), and this effect was mediated by higher levels of personal relevance in students' writing assignments (a linguistic measure). We also found that the UVI increased persistence through the original effects on course grades, for all students, and for underrepresented students in particular. In other words, engagement was more relevant for performance (with clear implications for persistence in the biomedical pipeline), but a focus on personal relevance (for confident students) was most relevant for academic choices over time. These data help shed light on the different motivational processes that underly the efficacy of the UVI for different groups of students.

Second, we conducted two large-scale interview studies (Rosenzweig et al., 2021, Rosenzweig et al., in press), to examine students' long-term interests in biomedical fields throughout college and how that translated into different career trajectories. We identified 1193 students from the introductory biology courses who intended to pursue biomedical fields of study early in college, and then interviewed them at the time of college graduation about their future plans (a 2-3 year follow-up). If students had changed their career plans since beginning college, we examined their explanations for changing their plans, specifically looking at (1) whether students who left biomedical fields referenced competence beliefs or value and (2) whether they felt pushed out or became disenchanted with their original path, or attracted to another path (e.g., pulled away by interest in another field). As shown below (Figure 1), there were 196 students who left biomedical fields of study during college, 76 who remained in biomedical fields of study but did not intend to pursue biomedical career paths post-graduation, and 921 who remained in biomedical fields and planned to pursue biomedical career paths. However, among the 921 who remained in biomedical fields, 422 (46%) still changed their career plans. We therefore examined two kinds of change: leaving biomedical fields altogether (e.g., changing to pre-law), or changing within the pipeline (e.g., changing from pre-med to biology PhD). With respect to leaving the pipeline we found results consistent with previous research: underrepresented ethnic minority students (African American, Latinx, or Native American students in this sample) were more likely to leave the biomedical pipeline. A different pattern emerged for change within the pipeline: There were no differences as a function of race/ethnicity, but women were more likely to change plans than men.

We coded students interviews and found that among students who left biomedical fields of study altogether, 62.5% reported changing primarily due to disenchantment, referencing both low interest and low perceived competence in biomedical fields. However, 25.2% of students who left primarily changed plans because felt pulled towards alternative fields of study, with almost all of them referencing a growing interest in other fields. Among those who remained in biomedical fields but changed plans, 34.8% reported disenchantment with their original plan, whereas 49.5% reported attraction, with most students referencing changing plans due to value and interest. Results highlight the importance of value and interest in shaping students' educational decision-making, underscoring the critical role of value-focused interventions in introductory biology courses. They also point to an important future direction for such interventions, focusing on the relative value of one career path or field of study compared to one another, as opposed to focusing only on value for one particular field.

Although it is not always easy to collect long-term follow up data from interventions, this data provides critical insights that can inform both theoretical understandings of motivation and more specific understandings of when and how to intervene to support students' motivation in pursuing biomedical careers. The follow-up of the utility value intervention explores the different processes by which reflecting on value can shape diverse students' learning outcomes and persistence in the field; the long-term interview data explores how students reflect on their own motivation in a way that can drive future intervention design.

Using Long-term Follow-up Data to Understand and Refine Utility-Value Interventions in the Biomedical Sciences

Undergraduate research and international experiences are often described as high-impact educational practices beneficial for undergraduate student success and for supporting the development of science identity and intercultural competencies. While several studies have investigated the impact of undergraduate research on students from minoritized groups, fewer studies have focused on their engagement in global experiences, and fewer still have explored their engagement in international research experiences. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Science Identity, Social Cognitive Career Theory, and the Intercultural Competence Model, this present study explores the benefits of participating in an international research experience for minority undergraduate scientists. Using a qualitative case study methodology, we examined the evolution of students' science identity, research competencies, and intercultural competence after engaging in a three-month international research opportunity in France and Belgium. We found that after participating in international research, minority undergraduate scientists had: (1) Increased confidence in their science identity and abilities; (2) Gained and strengthened skills necessary to be a successful researcher, (3) Recognized the influence of international exposure on their growth personally and professionally, (4) Expressed how monumental this research opportunity is for all minority students to experience. Our findings suggest substantial benefits from an international research experience on the development of minority undergraduate scientists.

The Role of International Research Experiences in the Development of Minority Undergraduate Scientists

Hostos Community College (HCC) of The City University of New York (CUNY) recently created and was awarded the NSF S-STEM titled “Hostos Engineering Academic Talent” (HEAT) Scholarship Program. The HEAT Program trains a subset of student as part of the HCC Joint Dual Engineering Degree Program with The City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering (CCNY’s GSoE) of CUNY. The HEAT Program offers low-income academically talented scholars financial support, and exposure to a variety of high-impact extracurricular activities that include: faculty and peer mentoring model; undergraduate research opportunities; STEM-related field trips; participation at professional STEM conferences; career orientation workshops; and other professional development opportunities. These activities are designed to increase efficacy, belonging and science identity, and are considered complementary to financial aid assistance. Financial aid by itself is insufficient for academic success for low-income academically talented college students.1,2 Here we report partial data as to the impact of the HEAT model on the first cohort of ten HEAT Scholars and five Associates who had benefitted from the program with the exception of direct financial support, as well as faculty and peer mentoring. To this end, we have administered a series of surveys3,4 targeting their perceived utility, program satisfaction, and assessment of non-cognitive and cognitive outcomes. Measures include academic self-efficacy for engineering courses, emotional engagement, identity as an engineer, expectancy for an engineering career, and cognitive engagement. These outcomes were assessed in HEAT Scholars, Associate HEAT Cohort and a control population of non-participating students taken from the HCC engineering general population. 

At the time the surveys were administered, six out of the ten scholars were conducting research. However, by the end of their first year of the program all were engaged in research. In addition, the scholars reported high levels of cognitive engagement, thinking about different ways to solve problems, and trying to connect current learning to previous knowledge. Most scholars participated in field trips to museums and engineering laboratories and took part in the 9th Hostos STEM Olympiad. As of today, eight out of the ten scholars have obtained their A.S. in Engineering from HCC; five have transferred to CCNY’s GSoE, and two to Cornell University. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, one HEAT Scholar had to move out of New York City, but intends to continue pursuing a B.E. degree and thus, 90% of the scholars remain in engineering and 80% remain in the program. The United States is in need of an increased and diverse STEM workforce.5 HCC via its Joint Dual Engineering Degree Program with The City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering of CUNY is contributing towards this endeavor.

Results of our study on non-cognitive impacts show that HEAT scholars have higher academic self-efficacy for engineering courses, feeling confident in the ability to learn the material, and to meet the challenge of performing well in engineering courses compared to the engineering population. HEAT Scholars also reported high levels of emotional engagement looking forward to engineering classes, enjoying learning new things about engineering, wanting to understand what is taught, and feeling good when in engineering classes. In addition, the Scholars reported high levels of cognitive engagement through the work in their engineering. Associate scholars scored significantly lower in all these measures comparable to that seen in the non-participating control. We consider this work exploratory as we look to confirm with a larger cohort size. This preliminary analysis of the HEAT program indicates its positive impact on the development of Scholars’ non-cognitive and cognitive outcomes due to their participation in the program’s activities. The scholars feel supported both morally and financially and appreciate that faculty and peer mentors are available at all times to encourage and advise.

Acknowledgments - We are grateful to the National Science Foundation (NSF S-STEM Award DUE-1833767), the HCC Office of Academic Affairs, our Hostos STEM students, our HEAT Program Assistant Luis Tejeda Ortiz for his significance contribution to HEAT, and the HCC and CCNY’s GSoE Financial Aid Offices, and the CUNY Research Foundation.

References
1. Smith, J. M., & Lucena, J. C. (2016). Invisible innovators: how low-income, first-generation students use their funds of knowledge to belong in engineering. Engineering Studies, 8, 1-26.
2. Patel, R. and Rudd, T. (2012). Can scholarships alone help students succeed? Lessons from two New York City Community Colleges. The Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration. MDRC.
3. Campbell, T. A., & Campbell, D. E. (1997). Faculty/student mentor program: Effects on academic performance and retention. Research in Higher Education, 38(6), 727-742.
4. Paglis, L. L., Green, S. G. and Bauer, T. N. (2006). Does adviser mentoring add value? A longitudinal study of mentoring and doctoral student outcomes. Research in Higher Education, 47(4), 451-476.

Increasing HSI Community College Engineering Students Success: Non-Cognitive Outcome Relationships with Financial Support and Mentoring

This concurrent mixed methods study focused on the outcomes of the contribution of specific support structures to the development of targeted skills and the self-efficacy of under-represented students in Life Sciences at an urban research university with a strong commitment to diversity. According to the SCCT model (Lent et al, 1994), increases in self-efficacy are expected to have long-term impact on Scholars intent to persist in STEM careers.The Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) model framed the design of the intervention and informed the study that asks: (1) Does: (a) scholarship support; (b) scholars' sense of self-efficacy in STEM programs; (c) outcome expectations for obtaining a STEM degree, and (d) experiences of support in college STEM contexts predict the STEM major student success? (2) What are the students' perceptions of the impact that their academic experiences, their sense of self-efficacy, and their outcome expectations for obtaining the STEM degrees have on their success in the program? 

Simple non-parametric statistical analysis was used to describe the characteristics of the members of various cohort groups. A survey with a retrospective pretest design collected end-of-year data from students in four domains: Science/STEM Identity, Lab Research Self-Efficacy, Scientific Communication Self-Efficacy, and Metacognitive Awareness (which had 8 subdomains). Results were analyzed using t-tests, and effect sizes were calculated. Their academic disposition and perceptions of their experiences were gathered using semi-structured individual interviews. 
Ninety-eight percent of the 60 students have been retained and/or graduated in a STEM discipline. Of the 25 students who have graduated with BS degrees, 19 have gone on to MD programs, PhD programs or still working in a STEM field. One student recently received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Eight students continued in MS programs at the same institution and continue to receive financial and professional development support from S-STEM. On the quantitative survey, students reported growth to most or all items in each domain and subdomain, with the greatest growth reported in Scientific Communication Self-Efficacy, the students' perceptions of their ability to communicate effectively as scientists. The participants who completed the program participated in exit interviews over the past three years on the importance of the support the program provided. This support might have contributed to the growth in each domain and sub domain. The subthemes associated with "support" included personal relationships with mentors, boosts in confidence as STEM scholars, career guidance, preparation and practice for interviews, presentations, peer feedback, and financial support. 
The size of the cohort groups limited the kind of analysis that could be done and so the findings are not generalizable but instead represent a case of one institution that might be transferred or translated to others. The support provided the students moved beyond counselling and instead paid attention to practical taken for granted skills and meeting the financial needs of the students who could then focus more on their academic outcomes. The confidence gained from the personal and scholarly supports and mentorship that were an integral aspect of the intervention might have allowed for continued interest in a career in STEM field. The students were not only performing well academically but also gaining the knowledge about possibilities available to them. The increase in the kinds of supports offered should demonstrate to institutions serving underrepresented students, who have extreme financial needs, that providing them with not only funding but also hands-on mentoring that is not just individualistic, but collaborative, can go a long way in making a difference in ensuring growth in specific skills, increased self-efficacy, graduation and retention in STEM fields.

Advancing Careers of Upper Level Students in the Life Sciences: The Case of a Minority Serving Institution

Introduction. Effective instruction of Gauss’s Law is extremely important because it has many applications in electrostatics. Perhaps more importantly, Gauss’s Law is a major component of the curriculum for gateway courses in which students decide if physics is the right area of study for them. In general, novice students have difficulty understanding and properly applying Gauss’s Law, and those with weaker spatial reasoning skills may face additional challenges as they struggle to visualize the relevant electric field symmetries (Pepper et al., 2012). There is some evidence that, on average, women have weaker spatial reasoning skills than men. Likewise, access to certain types of early life educational experiences may also impact spatial reasoning skills later in life (Uttal et al., 2012). Therefore, supporting students learning about Gauss’s Law by tailoring instruction to support spatial thinking could have a positive impact on the retention of women and other underrepresented groups in STEM. The present study proposes a new pedagogical tool to support students that struggle to visualize electric fields. Namely, we created a coherent tutorial utilizing interactive three-dimensional electric field simulations to teach students about electric field strength and direction.

Methods. Starting from a previously published tutorial that approached the topic of electric field symmetry from a more traditional perspective (Li & Singh, 2017), we developed a simulation-augmented tutorial covering the same material. The traditional tutorial relied on students' ability to perform vector addition and to visualize the results to answer questions about vector fields. The simulation-augmented tutorial was designed to support spatial thinking using a “guess and check” approach. After attempting to visualize the three-dimensional electric fields arising from a variety of charge distributions, students were able to view and interact with mathematically accurate simulated representations of those vector fields to see for themselves whether their mental images matched the simulations. We assessed student learning using the pre- and post-test that accompanied the published tutorial. Prior to taking the tutorial, all participants in the present study completed a demographics questionnaire, as well as a spatial reasoning assessment, the Paper Folding Test (Ekstrom et al., 1976). We used this data to separate participants into two groups that were roughly the same in composition with respect to gender, prior physics experience, and spatial reasoning ability. One group took the original tutorial, while the other group took our simulation-augmented tutorial.
Results. We found that the simulation-augmented tutorial was more effective than the traditional tutorial. Students who took the tutorial with simulations displayed larger improvements from pre- to post-test than those who took the traditional tutorial, and the Cohen’s effect size was large (d = 0.98). A stepwise multivariate regression revealed that the strongest predictor of improvement from pre- to post-test was which version of the tutorial participants completed. We also found that there was a contribution from the interaction term between the tutorial version and the participants’ paper folding test score. However, the most surprising result was the contribution of the interaction term between spatial ability and gender. We decided to further investigate this interaction by plotting improvement as a function of paper folding test score for each gender-tutorial combination. The lines of best fit suggest that, for female students, having weaker spatial thinking skills negatively impacted their ability to learn from the traditional tutorial. This effect was not seen with the simulation-based tutorial, nor was there a negative impact for male students with weaker spatial skills, regardless of the tutorial version. This result suggests that simulation-augmented tutorials may be especially helpful for female students with weaker spatial skills.

Conclusions and Discussion. Our results indicate that using simulations to support students in their spatial thinking about electric fields can be extremely helpful to students as they learn to apply Gauss’s Law. Previous physics education research suggests that students struggle with Gauss’s Law problems because: electric fields are not intuitive, students have trouble understanding the three-dimensional nature of electric fields, and students have difficulty recognizing symmetries in electric fields (Adrian & Fuller, 1997; Pepper et al., 2012; Singh, 2006). The simulation-augmented tutorial directly addresses these issues, as the simulations: help develop intuition, show electric fields in three dimensions, and allow students to explore symmetries of the field. While interventions such as simulations have been implemented in other STEM domains that require strong mental manipulation, no research before has investigated implementing manipulable three-dimensional simulations in the instruction electric fields. The success of this spatially targeted tutorial provides a first glimpse into the power of using simulations to help students overcome challenges in learning electrostatics. In addition, the strong interaction between gender and spatial reasoning ability with respect to learning gains further suggests that providing spatially targeted instruction to students in introductory STEM courses may also help achieve higher levels of persistence for members of underrepresented groups. Based on these findings, we are developing an entire Gauss’s Law tutorial series that incorporates the use of simulations.

References. 
Adrian, B. W., & Fuller, R. G. (1997). A qualitative investigation of college students' conceptions of electric fields. AAPT, 16. 
Ekstrom, R. B., & Harman, H. H. (1976). Manual for kit of factor-referenced cognitive tests, 1976. Educational testing service.
Li, J., & Singh, C. (2017). Investigating and improving introductory physics students’ understanding of the electric field and superposition principle. European Journal of Physics, 38(5), 055702.
Pepper, R. E., Chasteen, S. V., Pollock, S. J., & Perkins, K. K. (2012). Observations on student difficulties with mathematics in upper-division electricity and magnetism. Physical Review Special Topics-Physics Education Research, 8(1), 010111.
Singh, C. (2006). Student understanding of symmetry and Gauss’s law of electricity. American journal of physics, 74(10), 923-936.
Uttal, D. H., & Cohen, C. A. (2012). Spatial thinking and STEM education: When, why, and how?. In Psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 57, pp. 147-181). Academic Press.

Using Three-Dimensional Simulations to Support Spatial Thinking About Electric Fields

Students’ sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy are important factors in their college success. In this study, we examine the relationship between a first year intervention, NxtGEN, with STEM students and their reported sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy. Moreover, we explore a mechanism for explaining differences in sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy among NxtGEN participants and a comparison group. Specifically, we describe the characteristics of students’ academic and social support networks and ways these networks differ by participation in the intervention. This study relies on longitudinal survey data in which students listed people to whom they are connected in academic and social settings and provided details about the frequency and nexus of their connection to these people. Students also completed scales to measure sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy on this survey. We also surveyed a similar group of first year students who did not receive the NxtGEN intervention in order to better examine the effects of program participation. 

Using these data, we find that, on average, students who did not participate in NxtGEN had slightly larger academic and social networks in both the fall and winter terms of their first year. In addition, NxtGEN students in the spring term reported a higher sense of STEM self-efficacy but a lower sense of social belonging relative to their non-NxtGEN counterparts. Average NxtGEN student STEM self-efficacy scores remained stable across the fall and spring terms, while non-NxtGEN student STEM self-efficacy scores decreased over time. At the same time, scores for a sense of social belonging decreased over time for NxtGEN students while it increased for non-NxtGEN students.


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Next from 13th Conference on Understanding Interventions 2021

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