Cultivating a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) community for two-year college student success and persistence

Abstract

Undergraduate students studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) often fail to persist in critical “gateway” courses, resulting in students leaving the STEM pathway. Community college students leave STEM pathways at higher rates than students at universities. Implementation of a program designed to engage community college STEM students and faculty in a community of support was associated with increased persistence in STEM gateway courses and associate degree completion. Program elements included support staff, a STEM study room with peer tutors, faculty advisors, and transfer assistance. Over seven years, 415 students joined this opt-in support program. The majority of students in this program were economically disadvantaged and many were nontraditional college students. Using institutional data we tested the hypothesis that participation in this program was associated with increased student success and persistence in STEM courses and at the college. The mean GPA for students in the program in the ten courses with the highest STEM enrollments was higher (2.89) than that for other students (2.76). Quarter-to-quarter persistence was 87% for program students compared to 67% for non-program students in a matched student population. In STEM gateway courses, program students had between 1.2x to 3.5x greater likelihood than non-program students of progressing to precalculus-2 controlling for first-attempt GPA in precalculus-1. Similar persistence patterns were observed for other gateway STEM courses. Observed persistence for students in the program was higher than comparable groups of students, including persistence for those who experienced early failure in STEM courses. These data suggest students should be supported through early failure to enable persistence in critical STEM sequences, especially in gateway Math and Chemistry courses.