Fostering Personal Excellence: Strengthening Self-Belief, Belongingness, and Career Readiness for Low-Income Students in the Sciences and Mathematics

About This Grant

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at St. John Fisher University, a small liberal arts university located just outside Rochester, NY. Over its five-year duration, this Track 2 project will fund scholarships to 20 unique full-time students who are pursuing bachelor's degrees in biology, chemistry, biochemistry, psychology, mathematics, physics, computer science, data analytics, or cybersecurity. First-year students will receive up to four years of scholarship support. The project aims to increase student persistence in STEM fields by linking scholarships with effective supporting activities, including mentoring, paid undergraduate research experiences, tutoring, mindfulness training, graduate school preparation, and participation in discipline-specific conferences. By increasing the retention and graduation rates of low-income STEM students, the proposed project will have a significant impact not only on participating scholars but also on the communities to which those scholars will return after graduation. Many of the scholars remain in the Rochester region. This project has the potential to broaden participation in STEM fields and advance our understanding of how students' confidence, expectations, and goals influence their career choices and success. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of high-achieving, low-income undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project will investigate the effects of psychosocial factors on student persistence in STEM, focusing on self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal goals. The project will employ social cognitive career theory to build on successful practices from a previous award project, create cohort cohesion across various majors, and integrate career readiness programming into the scholar experience. Expected outcomes include increased retention and graduation rates, enhanced career readiness, and a stronger sense of belonging in STEM among scholars. The project will be evaluated using a mixed-methods approach, including surveys, focus groups, and institutional data analysis. Results will be disseminated through presentations at conferences, publications in academic journals, and reports to stakeholders. This project is funded by NSF's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of academically, low-income talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.