HSI Pilot Project: Promoting Virtual Experiential Learning to Support Part-time and Nontraditional Students

This project aims to create virtual experiential learning opportunities that are specifically aimed at part-time and non-traditional students attending Palo Alto College, an Hispanic-serving community college in the greater San Antonio area. The project team is focusing on these particular students for several reasons. Internships and undergraduate research opportunities are essential for students to gain real-world experience and improve their competitiveness upon entering the STEM workforce, while also increasing academic engagement. However, non-traditional and part time students often encounter significant challenges when they are pursuing such co-curricular experiences. Moreover, career services that assist in preparing students for internships are typically optimized to support traditional full-time students. This project will pilot the provision of quality career preparation using a virtual format to improve both access to, and the quality of, professional experiences for part-time and non-traditional student populations.

A key driver of the project's investigators is to capitalize on employers' recent adoption of remote working and virtual internships as part of their response to COVID-19. Remote and virtual internships may be more accessible to part-time and non-traditional students that may be unable to make a daily commute to an office building or lab. The project will create partnerships with STEM employers and 4-year universities to establish virtual internships and undergraduate research opportunities. New Career Support Services for part-time and non-traditional students will include streaming presentations from industry speakers, access to peer mentors/embedded tutors, and online platforms for building essential professional skills. Three goals guide the project. First is to increase participation in internships and undergraduate research. Second is to improve access to professional networking and high-engagement activities. Third is to increase the availability of virtual mentoring/tutoring for part-time and non-traditional students. Research from this project will generate new knowledge about effective approaches that will increase retention and graduation rates of undergraduate students pursuing degrees in STEM fields at HSIs and two-year colleges. Project outcomes will be disseminated regionally, statewide, and nationally, through conferences, submissions to peer-reviewed journals, and sharing with existing NSF-HSI projects. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of the HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also draw from these approaches to generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.