Project Title: Fostering Student Success and Diversity in STEM by Combining Scholarship Support with Mentoring and Research Engagement

The Scholars in Undergraduate Math and Science (SUMS) project aims to increase student enrollment and retention/persistence and improve 4-year graduation rates by linking these scholarships with effective supporting activities, such as cohort-building, undergraduate research experiences, mentoring, graduate school preparation and participation in discipline-specific conferences. Holistically, this project will extensively prepare the students for entrance into the workforce as a biologist, chemist, physicist or mathematician. Additionally, this project will advance understanding of effective evidence-based strategies and activities that promote student participation and success in STEM.

Goal and Specific Aims

Goal: To increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need at PVAMU. This goal will be accomplished by three specific objectives:

Specific Objective I: Increase enrollment in the STEM disciplines of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, with particular emphasis on recruiting students from PVAMU’s feeder and neighboring high schools;

Specific Objective II: Improve 3-year retention and 4-year graduation rates in all BCAS STEM disciplines by engaging students in a multidimensional mentorship program;

Specific Objective III: Create a cross-discipline intellectual learning community that promotes advancement of SUMS scholars to a STEM graduate program or into the STEM workforce.

L-R: Dr. Fred Bonner, Co-PI (Professor, Education); Dr. James Valles, Co-PI (Associate Professor, Mathematics); Dr. Gloria Regisford, PI (Professor, Biology) Dr. Alphonso Keaton, Co-PI (Associate Professor, Biology, Office of Undergraduate Studies); Dr. Orion Ciftja, Co-PI (Professor, Chemistry and Physics)

This program is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Award No. 1930530.

Education Research Project

The SUMS project will

1. examine the role(s) of cohort-building, mentoring and research engagement in fostering STEM student retention/persistence and high graduation rates in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics, at PVAMU, by using intersectionality as a theoretical approach.
2. provide an empirically informed perspective on how to meet the needs of STEM students who do not manifest only one identity status at a time, but who represent all markers, such as socio-economics status, gender, and ethnicity, always.

This program is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Award No. 1930530.