Elizabeth Holcombe: An Integrated approach to support underrepresented students in STEM

Integrating across Academic and Student Affairs to Support Underrepresented Students in STEM: Lessons from the CSU STEM Collaboratives

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

The challenges of keeping undergraduate students in STEM programs and getting them to complete their degrees are well-documented and frequently discussed by members of this group and a wide audience of stakeholders around the country (Eagan, Hurtado, Figueroa, & Hughes, 2014). For students from underrepresented backgrounds, these challenges are even steeper, as they may have experienced inadequate high school preparation in math and science, an unwelcoming or chilly climate in college, or poorly taught introductory STEM courses (Tsui, 2007). Many existing interventions for underrepresented students in STEM tend to target small groups and remain disconnected from other support programs for low-income, first-generation, or minority students. Additionally, most existing support programs have either not included or not coordinated with ongoing efforts to reform introductory STEM curriculum and teaching.

In response to these conditions, the California State University (CSU) System created the STEM Collaboratives project, coordinated at the system level and implemented on 8 CSU campuses. The project’s aims were to encourage campuses to rethink the ways in which they were supporting their first-year students in STEM (with an emphasis on students from underrepresented backgrounds) by integrating interventions for greater impact. The idea was to create a comprehensive program that would assist students inside the classroom, through pedagogical reform of introductory/gateway STEM courses, and outside of the classroom, through mentoring, advising, tutoring, or other programs; these supports would begin in the summer and continue throughout students’ freshman year. By integrating curricular and co-curricular supports and bringing together faculty and student affairs staff, students would experience a more seamless and integrative support system during their first year in STEM.

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.