Undergraduate Research Data-Science Courses and Volunteer ProjectsInform and Accelerate Wesley College’s Retention Among First- and Second-Year Students

摘要

Wesley College is Delaware’s minority-serving, private, undergraduate, liberal-arts institution. The College continually advances innovative programming to boost college readiness and to stem the dropping numbers of its first-time (freshmen) applicants. In order to help unprepared students for the rigors of its programs and to enhance a truly integrated STEM curriculum^–, Wesley strengthened diverse academic equity by implanting data-science as cornerstone undergraduate research projects^–. To further scale-up student-engagement and to nationally disseminate our high-impact STEM-education successes^,, the College developed an Undergraduate Research Center for Analytics, Talent, and Success (UR-CATS). To streamline procurement documents and hazardous-waste handling workflows, the College implemented the use of an online platform that resulted in major annual savings. To engage middle and high school students, Wesley STEM undergraduates established a Science Club to demonstrate hands-on science lessons, so STEM concepts come to life. To help explain the learning mechanisms by which integrated STEM experiences support outcomes, this paper presents interventions with particular attention to curriculum design for incoming STEM freshmen who place into pre-Calculus or a lower math course. To show that engagement with STEM college students as role models have a positiveimpact on high-school student interest, we provide examples where Science Clubmembers pose challenges and show different perspectives on everyday items. Insummary, Wesley project outcomes have allowed for coordinatedinterventions^–,– instudent well-being and student success.