Outcomes of the S-STEM Scholarship Program in Our Institution in the Past Three Years

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outcomes-of-the-s-stem-scholarship-program-in-our-institution-in-the-past-three-years.pdf (836.5 KB)

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https://peer.asee.org/outcomes-of-the-s-stem-scholarship-program-in-our-institution-in-the-past-three-years

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http://hdl.handle.net/11603/22495

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UMBC Mechanical Engineering Department
UMBC Faculty Collection

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Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8104-423X
 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0061-2715

Date

2021-07-26

Type of Work

conference papers and proceedings
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Program

Citation of Original Publication

Zhu, Liang et al.; Outcomes of the S-STEM Scholarship Program in Our Institution in the Past Three Years; 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, 26 July, 2021; https://peer.asee.org/outcomes-of-the-s-stem-scholarship-program-in-our-institution-in-the-past-three-years

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©2021 American Society for Engineering Education.

Subjects

Abstract

Our institution was awarded an S-STEM grant in 2018 to continue to provide scholarships and educational opportunities to low-income and talented undergraduate mechanical engineering students. Since then, 44 undergraduate students with diverse backgrounds in Mechanical Engineering department have been awarded the scholarships. In addition to financial support, the S-STEM scholars are connected to individual faculty mentors and provided with opportunities of internships, research-related experiences, and community building activities. The large and diverse applicant pool allowed us to award 22-27 scholarships to students each year, exceeding the targeted annual number of 20 scholarships. Academic records demonstrate that all the proposed benchmarks have been exceeded, especially in the retention rate (91%), diversity of student population, research experience/internship participation (55%), and percentage of our scholars enrolled in graduate school after their graduation (29%). All are higher than that in the regular student population in our department. The results suggested that faculty and peer mentoring, proactive research-related activities, engagement in internship, and interaction with faculty and their peers might contribute positively to the success of the scholars in our program. Some of the cost-effective program activities have been implemented in our undergraduate program, and could be adapted by engineering programs in other institutions. With continuous commitment by faculty members and department/college recognition, the positive impact of the program could be sustained via merging into existing undergraduate program.