Thank you for taking time to watch our video!  We have just completed our first year of the Furman University NSF S-STEM Track 2 STEM Scholars program and we are excited to share a brief review of the main elements of the program alongside reflections about the first year from our inaugural cohort of students. 

Enhancing belonging (in college and STEM fields), strengthening agency to pursue help-seeking behaviors (empowerment), and increasing a sense of flourishing are key objectives of our program, and we look forward to discussion around these themes. How are you providing mechanisms to support similar objectives, what is working, and how are you measuring impacts?

Terrific program, John! It seems that ours shares some goals such as fostering belonging and community. In our program mentors are key for students to feel they can seek help and open up to them. Weekly meetings of 30 min is what we recommend, but mentor-mentee can adjust that their needs. We have seen challenges these past two years in our students and the mentors have been a rock for some of them. When we feel the students need help beyond what we can provide, we refer them to counseling and psychological services at the university. 

Also, "going places" together, that being a site visit to a company or a graduate school program (which for us typically translates in a 2 hour drive in a van or two :)) or a weekend retreat, like the one we did for the first time (since the pandemic started) this spring. That was a great opportunity to bond, no just between scholars, but with some mentors who joined us, and even a few alumni from a track 1 previous program.

As for belonging to STEM, we use strategies that develop science identity (doing research, going and presenting at conferences, attending panels of STEM professionals, and graduate school students and administrators, etc. Having panels of students that look like them has been hugely successful in getting our scholars to believe they can do this.

Cheers!

Marisol

This is great! This is very similar to a program I have where STEM students have a mentor-mentee relationship. They provide support for each other. I look at impact on both mentor and mentee through evaluation questionnaires and interviews. I provide this support on a different grant that I will showcase next year. This mentor-mentee support is provided in their introductory biology courses, which is often a weed out course. 

Programs like these are necessary and should be normalized in STEM.  Often times (I would like to research this, also) I find that students, particularly those from underrepresented groups, approach STEM in such individualized fashions (studying, projects, papers, etc.), which is not conducive to success.  The breadth and depth of the material warrants collaboration and collegiality.  Additionally, the peer to peer model helps students access the sociocultural institutional knowledge that is not often shared (i.e. you just have to learn and experience for yourself, which almost models a sink or swim/meritocratic mindset).  This program reminds me very much of the POSSE scholars program.  A couple of questions:

• what level of culturally responsive mentor training do you provide to your students and faculty?
• do you utilize different model formats (dyads, triads, etc.)?
• what level of internship support do you provide for students?
• Do other departments have programs that are similar because cohort-type programs would be beneficial across disciplines?

Such an amazing program... we have no idea how massive demystifying early college experience is to these youths. This is an awesome program! I voted!! 

Could you share detail about what the youth actually do on a day to day basis while they are in the program? Agree with the importance of this work. A see from an earlier post that someone is asking about mentor preparation. We at American Museum of Natural History have also invested in mentor preparation and how can we support practices mentor engage in that combat historical inequities and access issues. I would hope to learn from this project and share what we do!

One other question - would instruments do you use to measure sense of belonging? We have just completed a survey completion exercise that includes that construct. We have not thought help-seeking behaviors. Super interesting. Please share.

Thank you for sharing this great program! I appreciate the robust programming to support students in their transition to college as well as through their first years of college, and it is exciting to learn that so many of them have procured funded research experiences after their first year. In your note, I see that Pathways advising continues through the first two years of college; are there resources planned to support this program's students beyond their second year? Also, to echo a prior comment, I would love to know more about how you are measuring sense of belonging. I appreciate you sharing some preliminary outcomes, and I look forward to learning more as you continue to follow your first cohorts!

This is a cool project. The cohort model is also central to the Emerge project that I am working on; creating the peer-support network is probably the most substantive asset we give our participants, and I'll bet the same dynamic is at work at Furman. But what stood out the most to me is the potential durability and scalability of the project. If each cohort is comprised of students already committed to attending Furman, then presumably the benefits of cohort activities can be applied to a LOT of incoming students. Plus, I'll bet the programmatic costs of doing this are not astronomical, so hopefully this is something that will continue when the day comes that NSF funding is no longer available?

This project and video were done very well. We all know that the transition from high school to college can be a rough one, so seeing the good this program is doing not only for STEM, but for students and building up a community is just wonderful to see. The goals and work you are doing that were presented in this video are great and I would love to see more in the future. 

Thanks so much for the presentation, and for including some of your early outcomes measures in your description. I just love to see examples of this work succeeding! Given the clear need for this kind of scaffolding for underrepresented student populations, from your perspective, what aspects of this program are most scalable, and what feels like it's really specific to Furman? Thanks for sharing!

Thanks Daniel and Kenne for your comments and questions.  We do use the scholarships for recruiting so while some of the students are already committed there are many that are making the decision to come to Furman based on participation in this program as well as the scholarship support from the award.  The scholarship funding represents nearly 80% of the award so while that is critical to help these students not need to work during the academic year it also means most of the program (summer experience, enhanced advising and cohort based curricular offerings) are relatively inexpensive and could readily be scaled.  And while providing paid research experiences is somewhat costly these costs are provided through Furman and other extramural funding (not through the S-STEM award).  We just finished recruiting our second cohort of students and your questions/comments are helping us strategize for next steps and carrying forward these scalable program components are a key focus of our next steps.  

Love programs that make students feel connected to campus through a learning community. They make a huge difference in preventing isolation and in ensuring student success. We had a cohort of students in our grant taking part in academic projects outside the classroom and their visibility and connectedness helped other students connect to the campus. 

Thanks for sharing. 

Thank you for this great video. I also believe that the "cohort" or "togetherness" is a key component that would ensure success.  We are also applying the same idea to advise students in our Information Technology program to take courses as cohorts, I hope that it will help.  Thank you again for sharing. 

Thank you for sharing your team experience, this is wonderful!  I also believe that "togetherness" could be a great idea to "glue" all team members.  We are also applying this idea for our students, and I hope that our students will also be successful.

Thank you for sharing your team experience, this is wonderful!  I also believe that "togetherness" could be a great idea to "glue" all team members.  We are also applying this idea for our students, and I hope that our students will also be successful.

I'm impressed with all you're doing here to establish community among STEM students from the outset. Although we know that our WISE summer interns and Scholars form small groups (web-like rather than cohort) among themselves, we haven't been nearly as intentional at developing sense of belonging as you are doing through this project. Lots of great ideas--and so glad to see you say that they're budget-friendly in nature. Seems like some of it is a change of perspective and modification of ways that some faculty see/do their roles, so then it becomes a matter of having the right people on board and ensuring commitment to a common goal. Thank you for giving us that perspective!