RII-BEC: Enhancing the Transition of COVID-19 Disadvantaged Students from Undergraduate to Graduate Studies in STEM through Multi-Year Undergraduate Research Experiences

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This project at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) aims to serve the national interest by increasing the number of students completing undergraduate and graduate degrees and pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, which is critical to United States global competitiveness. The project is designed to mitigate challenges and barriers imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic on students who have been the most affected in STEM disciplines, namely students from groups who have been historically underrepresented in STEM. The investigators will engage a cohort of twenty students who will be guided for four years from undergraduate studies to graduate school. The project will provide these students with onboarding, academic preparation, advising and educational planning, social and networking opportunities, and financial support to increase student retention, progression, and graduation rates. The project aims to use these interventions to improve the students' preparation as undergraduates for transition to graduate school and STEM careers. In this direction, the project will introduce a structured undergraduate research program that provides academic preparation and authentic mentored research engagement that spans across four years of study. The project will highlight the scientific process and its significance, and will study the project's effectiveness on building students' STEM identity and sense of belonging. Project activities will help lead to a more diverse and competitive STEM workforce in Nevada. The underlying goal of the project is to employ best practices coupled with creative approaches to provide students with a knowledge base and training for entering and succeeding in graduate school. To support this goal, additional goals include providing students with: (1) an improved perspective and sense of belonging for students in STEM fields; (2) an understanding of, and experience with, research and the scientific process; and (3) opportunities to participate in mentored research experiences. The project will achieve these goals through sustainable intra-partnership collaborations among UNLV's Office of Undergraduate Research, College of Engineering, College of Sciences, Graduate College, advising community, and STEM departments and faculty to provide mentoring, academic support and social support, professional opportunities, and funding. Each student participant will receive individualized as well as cohort support, and the project will unfold in four phases: Year/Phase 1 - retention, placement, advising, mentoring, and STEM identity formation; Year/Phase 2 - research readiness and self-efficacy building; Year/Phase 3 - mentored authentic research experiences; and Year/Phase 4 - graduate school readiness. The project's scope is to investigate and advance understanding of the impacts of the global pandemic on student success and transition to graduate school in a STEM discipline. Through mixed-methods evaluation, the project will develop and disseminate a model on how to mitigate the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on undergraduate students from underrepresented groups, while improving students' STEM identity and self-efficacy and preparing them for graduate school and, later, for the STEM workforce. The award is co-funded by the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation program. 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.