Welcome! We are just wrapping up our pilot year. This video is highlighting our hopes and goals for the TPA and WCC STEM Scholars Programs. Mercy College is aiming to increase retention in STEM majors through mentor programs. In our pilot year we had a small number of students. We've found that students enjoy learning about different career paths and opportunities. And when they come to events students tell us that they enjoy them. Getting students to show up and stay engaged has been our biggest struggle. The parts of the program with the most structure are the most effective and we are working to implement similar structure across all parts of the project. We gave all students a baseline survey measuring attitudes about STEM, growth mindset, and self-efficacy. We hope to see increases in these areas over time as well as increased retention rates from year to year.

Hi Kasey - 

I appreciate that you are sharing your challenges as well as your successes! What are you currently doing to recruit students to "show up?" With so many other things competing for their time, I can imagine it can be difficult. 

I'm also interested in knowing more about your near-peer mentoring and how you find and train the peers who are mentoring your participants?

Thanks!

Jeanne

I am sure it's an exciting time as you wrap up your pilot year! I was wondering if you record any of the research projects or career path discussions on a website/YouTube.

(We work with high-school students considering engineering careers, and would love to incorporate resources like your research projects to help show students near-peer models of STEM students.)

Thanks so much for your important work with the next generation of STEM professionals!

We aren't currently recording or posting anything. But this is in our plans for next year to get some of our events on our website, as well as some of the student research posters.

Sounds like a useful program that will help a lot of students see themselves in STEM careers in their future!

I would love to hear more about the research experiences! How are you designing those and do you have insights on generalizable methods or pedagogies that tend to be more useful than others?

The research experiences that students can engage in depend on the particular STEM major but as a Biology faculty, and as a researcher who works with undergraduates  I can speak to what we do in the Department of Natural Sciences at Mercy College in terms of best practices.  By far I see the best of all high impact practices effective engagement in research.

  Course based projects and project based learning models (CURES) are methods we use and see benefits with our students as well.  When students are able to do real sciences and bring their own ideas to the research, the benefits to students are greater.  Project based learning when done right in the context of a class room can be extremely effective , engaging, and fun for students.  See the Buck institute for higher education for further info on project based learning.

The experiences offered are specific to the research interests of the faculty mentors. Faculty submit an application with their project and we select projects across disciplines - in 2017 we had three project, in 2018 we will have six, two each in biology and psychology, one computer science and one cybersecurity. The projects are designed to be something that the students will be able to complete in four weeks. Some, like the psychology project will be ongoing, but students will be able to complete their piece of the project and potentially continue in the fall. As mentioned in Anthony's comment, one key piece is that the projects are authentic research projects designed to answer real questions which we find an effective way to keep students engaged in research.

Kasey,

Thank you for sharing about Team STEM.

I like hearing about Mentor models that foster growth mindsets and research skills. It is the student relatability to mentors that I find to be key, here. As another extension for pragmatic exposure to STEM studies and pathways, I like hearing about student exposure to research by older students. My concern however is that these students may feel overwhelmed or otherwise unprepared to engage with the research of college students, thereby decreasing their confidence in doing STEM. Does Team STEM take any measures to consider the content of the college-level research and the knowledge set of the high school students?