Elizabeth Holcombe: Implementing integrated comprehensive student programs in STEM

Implementing Integrated Comprehensive Student Programs in STEM: Challenges and Facilitators from the CSU STEM Collaboratives

This blog post, authored by Pullias Center research assistant Elizabeth Holcombe, was originally published in the ASCN Blog, March 21, 2018.

In my last post, I described the benefits of integrated support programs for underrepresented students in STEM. These integrated programs bridge organizational silos and build a unified community of support, in which faculty and staff work together to break down barriers to student success. The campuses that participated in the CSU STEM Collaboratives project saw increased student success and other organizational benefits as a result of creating integrated programs.

While integration across functional areas represents a promising strategy for supporting student success, it represents a new way of working in higher education. Implementing integrated programs presents some unique challenges that may not be evident when implementing other types of interventions. In this post, I will briefly discuss a few of these challenges, as well as some strategies that STEM Collaboratives campuses used to overcome them.

Read the rest of this blog post on the ASCN Blog.

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Elizabeth Holcombe is a research assistant at the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California.