This Phase II S-STEM program just completed its fourth successful year. COVID-19 presented challenges in the past two years, but none was a match for the determination of this great community. Scholars did well, in fact, they did extremely well supporting each other in study halls and conducting research, and built the strongest supportive community.  

Thanks all for the video and the program. The program activities/supports you highlighted seem well-suited to the project goals. You also talked a lot about community building-I'm curious how you all work with the students to build that sense of community, whether you use a cohort model, leverage common experiences, etc. 

Also, how are you all thinking about program impact? It seems like degree persistence/retention would be an important metric, but I'd imagine there are other ways in which the program is having a positive impact on its students (like supporting them during covid-times). Again, just curious to hear more about how you all are thinking about outcomes and impact. 

Thanks Jeff. Our one-hour Friday Seminar, Study Halls, and Research clusters all play a major role in community building. However, perhaps the most important catalyst is our Leadership Workshops where students learn and practice various leadership activities. We hold three workshops per semester. 

While retention and on-time graduation are the two measurable outcome, we believe sense of community and support of each other, peer- and faculty-mentoring are other biproducts. In general, our scholars indicate in their surveys that peer- and faculty mentoring as well as alumni-mentoring have been most beneficial to them. 

Our general approach is that scholars own the program, and they ensure it is effective and successful. 

Hello Rahman! Your project clearly fits a local need for extra support toward futures in STEM academic pursuits and careers. I'm interested in the research you mentioned your participant scholars are conducting. Are they designing their own experiments? And either way, would love to hear more about some of the research questions they are pursuing. Thanks in advance for sharing more of your experience.

I echo the feedback. It would have been great to hear from your students about what they have done. It's great that you are meeting the financial needs. Would love to hear more about the demographics of your students. 

Hello Catherine,

About 70% of our students are first generation, majority from NC. 

Data on the 2018 S-STEM Program by Spring 2022
      * 22 active scholars: Chemistry (3), CS (9), Geology (2), Math (4), and Physics (4)
      * 51 Total number of scholars served: Chemistry (6), CS (19), Geology (5), Math (13), and Physics (8)
      * 18 Female (35.3%) and 33 Male (64.7%)
      * 24 Undergraduate (80%) and 6 Graduate (20%) students
      * 4 African American (13%), 2 Asian (7%), 6 (20%) Hispanic, 1 American Indian, 1 Middle Eastern, and 6 (20%) White
      * 23 graduated: 2 Chemistry, 9 in CS, 2 Geology, 7 Math, and 3 Physics

Thanks 

Rahman 

I like the idea of a community-oriented supportive STEM program. What is not clear is how students engage in research activities? How the outcomes of the work is measured? What are the key foci of the project that indicates success?  

Hello Bhaskar, 

There are several different types of research our scholars are involved with in teams of three to four: 1) Students with ideas give a quick "Pitch an Idea" at the opening night of the program and ask whether there are interest from other members, 2) an idea may have been presented to the students by one of the faculty mentors, and 3) continuing projects from previous semesters where new team members can join. 

For example, we have a Quantum Computing project that has had two Physics and two CS majors in it last year. This project was hardware oriented and was in Physics.

The main measure of success for us is 90%+ retention rate, on-time graduation, and graduates successfully secure jobs or join graduate programs. 

Thanks.

Rahman 

Can you explain in detail some of the activities that you have found to be critical to your program?

Hello Rita:

1) Participating in research in teams for two hours per week

2) Attending weekly study halls for at least two hours per week

3) Attending the STEM Seminar 9

4) Attending Leadership workshops (3 per semester as part of the Seminar)

These and the alumni-mentoring communications. 

Thanks.

Rahman  

 

Appreciate seeing another S-STEM program and structure.  Would appreciate knowing a little more about the research projects the students completed and whether they were also encouraged to pursue REU time opportunities at ASU or elsewhere?  Did you have any pre-college camps or experience to help them get ready for their App State experience?

Hello Rahman,

Thanks for sharing your video and the features of your program. We also have 1 hour Friday "seminar" in our case followed by 1h tutoring/study hall. What kinds of topics you cover in that seminar (is that what you call STEM seminar 9?), do you find challenging having to tend to several different majors both in that seminar and in the study hall? Do you group the students by courses they are taking during study hall? Do you have students leading the sessions, maybe in a rotating role? 

Thanks!

 

Hello Maria,

We have five disciplines in the program and have tried to have at least one talk from each of the disciplines every semester. Also, we have three of the classes assigned for Leadership Workshops. We also invite external speakers from the industry or other universities. 

At the beginning of the semester we asked students to tell us what courses they are taking and we will try to find people who are in the same courses to create study hall teams when possible and find a graduate student or upper-level student to lead the teams when possible. Naturally, there are times, we have one student in a course, but that mostly happens in the upper-level courses. We have tried to team these students up with lower-level students so they can benefit from their experience. 

As for the level of the talks, we always tell the speakers that the class has students of five majors from freshman to graduate levels so their talk shouldn't be too technical. 

Hope this answer your questions. Please feel free to e-mail me at tashakkorir@appstate.edu if I can be of further assistance. 

All the best.
Rahman 

 

Since Fall 2018, the program has enjoyed a great diversity among its 51 total unique scholars with 18 (35.3%) female and 33 (64.7%) male. Students' demographics for our scholars since Fall 2018 are: 9 African American (17.6%), 3 Asian (5.9%), 10 (19.6%) Hispanic, and 29 (56.9%) White. Our school diversity is about 97% White, and the program enjoys a much better diversity.