LSAMP B2B: STAMP TWO
Bridge to the Baccalaureate: Strategic Alliance for Minority Participation (STAMP TWO)
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation
Program Overview
The University of Hawai’i Community Colleges (UHCC), Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation – Bridge to the Baccalaureate (LSAMP-B2B) partners share a common motivation to incorporate systemic, inclusive strategies to recruit, retain, (transfer) and graduate a professionally prepared STEM workforce in Hawai’ii and the US. The key objective of this LSAMP-B2B is to create a sustainable, articulated, and purposeful multimodal community college Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) program to double the number and increase the resilience of Native Hawaiian, Pacific Island, and other Underrepresented Minority (URM) students who enroll, persist in, and transfer to a four-year degree program in the STEM fields at the University of Hawai’ii. Students who navigate and persist in the STEM UHCC program acquire the requisite skills, training, and performance-based funding needed to successfully transfer to a four-year university and ultimately pursue graduate education or move into the STEM workforce. Further, the LSAMP B2B project intends to build a sustained, fully articulated transfer curriculum through institutional collaborations between the UH two-year colleges and the UH four-year campuses.
The LSAMP B2B STAMP TWO (S2) alliance is led by Kapi’olani Community College (KapCC) and partners with Hawai’i, Honolulu, Kaua’i, Leeward, Windward Community College, and Maui College. Key strategies within the S2 Alliance are built upon lessons learned in an earlier STAMP project funded by the NSF LSAMP program and best practices informed by the Tinto model for student retention as well a” “high conte”t” activities to serve native Hawaiian and other URM learners. Key strategies of S2 include recruitment activities, mentoring, and undergraduate research experiences. The STAMP-TWO Alliance leadership collaborates with the UH System to promote institutionalization, articulation, and sustainability of the pathway while leveraging other funded STEM programs at UH and strengthening the alliance and communication between UH campuses.
Intellectual Merit
Academic and curricular pathway models for student engagement and persistence in higher education have shown to be highly effective treatments for STEM student training and in support of underrepresented groups in STEM education. At the University of Hawai’i Community Colleges (UHCC), this STEM pathways development process has been highly effective in increasing the numbers of students (including Native Hawaiians (NH)) from 11th and 12th grade to undergraduate matriculation in the four-year Colleges at UH.
Higher education institutions deliver academic programs on all six major islands in Hawai’i; however, students on only three islands have access to STEM baccalaureate degrees. Thus, it is vital that UH develop sustainable, articulated STEM pathways from the community colleges for students who intend to graduate with a four-year degree and that the UHCCs provide strong academic training and high impact practices, including performance-based support, to ensure the success of STEM URM students as they transfer and graduate.
Broader Impact
This S2 initiative will have a broad impact in producing large numbers of diverse, highly skilled and uniquely trained URM scientists. This project will leverage numerous other projects (NSF LSAMP, TCUP, EPSCoR) at UH that are focused on increasing the number of NH students who matriculate and
enter the STEM fields. The State of Hawai’i is one of the most remote locations on the surface of the earth. This isolation has afforded the Hawaiian islands unique opportunities to develop sustainable communities that are rich in culture and diverse in environment. The UH campuses at Mānoa and Hilo are research powerhouses of the University, and multiple UH campuses have been recently designated as the most diverse colleges in the country. In acquiring the skills and resources needed to be successful at our four-year partner colleges, UHCC URM STEM students will take advantage of Hawai’i’s diversity by employing undergraduate research experiences in place-based activities designed to positively impact their communities throughout the Hawaiian islands.
Goals
Project Goals:
- To double the enrollment number of LSAMP UHCC students to 336.
- Increase the number of LSAMP student transfers from UHCC’s to 116.
- Decrease the attrition rate of UHCC URM students from first to second year from 24% to less than 20%.
Strategies
Strategy 1: Peer Mentoring (PM)
Peer Mentoring, a well-established and effective best practice in STEM education generally, has been highly effective in supporting learning particularly for students who are underrepresented in STEM. Teaching between and among students as they work together and at times mentor each other in and outside the classroom is essential in STEM fields. Both peer mentors and mentees benefit from this strategy individually and by becoming more connected to the campus as a whole. The goal of peer mentoring opportunities is to foster collaboration between students and faculty as well as their own peers to excel in their academic journey. Peer mentors provide students with rich and innovative mentoring experiences that benefit not only themselves but also their mentees, inspiring them to succeed in their core STEM courses. Mentors are trained to support student success in courses, as well as URE projects.
Strategy 2: Undergraduate Research Experiences (URE)
Undergraduate Research Experiences (URE) are an opportune way to actively engage LSAMP scholars in faculty/staff interactions and are a key strategy for broadening participation in STEM. URE can be highly effective when offered as a supplement to STEM coursework as part of a STEM course itself. Themes are often place-based and provide relevance and local context to student learning. In addition to providing a vital advanced learning pedagogy, URE also instills students with metacognitive skills and ancillary training that is less formal but just as important in STEM, such as gaining collaborative and critical thinking skills. URE creates an experience that is most similar to STEM careers and where students can discover that they can work in high-pressure environments, write and present in a formal STEM context, enjoy a sense of accomplishment and validation in solving real world problems, and build relationships with mentors and networks with those in the industry.
Strategy 3: Performance-Based (PB)
First-year STEM students are supported financially based on their academic standing until they reach their second year and decide to be engaged in URE and/or PM.
Accomplishments
By the end of Year 2,
The total number of unduplicated URE and PM participants is 112, and the number of unduplicated PB is 92. We are, therefore, at 204 out of our 336 engaged participants goal and reached 61% completion.
Fifty-nine participants transferred to a four-year major in STEM and four to a non-STEM four-year degree. The STEM majors into which B2B participants transferred into are: Engineering (20), Biology, Marine Biology and Microbiology (17), Computer Science (10), Environmental Sciences (6), Chemistry (2), Kinesiology (2), Animal Science (1), and Psychology and Social Sciences (1). Fifty-nine represents 35% of our consenting cohort.
Out of 79 PB consenting participants, 68 have either transferred into a four-year degree in STEM (15) or are still in good standing (53); representing an attrition rate of 13.9%, which includes participants who transferred in a non-STEM four-year degree (2), changed to a non-STEM major (1), graduated with a two-year degree in STEM but did not transfer (3), and are no longer enrolled in college (5).
URE students are strongly encouraged to develop their presentation and technical skills by participating in research symposia.
In the fall semester 2022 and the spring semester 2023, 33 URE LSAMP students presented their research findings at the Kapi’olani Students Undergraduate Research Fair (SURF) in Biology, Botany, Computer Science, Ecology, Engineering, Geosciences, Ingenious Knowledge, Physics, Physiology, and Science Education, and Sustainability.
In the fall semester 2023 and the spring semester 2024, another 33 URE LSAMP students presented their research findings at the Kapi’olani Students Undergraduate Research Fair (SURF) in Biology, Botany, Computer Sciences, Ecology, Engineering, Geosciences, Ingenious Knowledge, Physics, and Physiology.
In Year 1 and Year 2 47 URE students also presented their research at other research symposia, such as the Annual Leeward CC Undergraduate Student Research Symposium, the West Hawaii Rotary Club, the INBRE Biomedical Symposium, the Tester Memorial Symposium, the UH-WO Research Symposium, the Hawaii Chapter of the American Society for Microbiology (HI-ASM) conference, the Akamai Workforce Initiative, the Islands of Opportunity Alliance symposium, the Hawaii Conservation Conference, and the NCUR, ERN and SACNAS research conferences. They also attended and competed in Rocketry competitions such as Cansat, Rockon, ARLISS, and First Nation Launch.