Establishing Practices Integrating Commuter Students – Year 1

Abstract

The EPIC grant focuses on the integration of STM (Science, Technology, & Mathematics) commuter students into the Valparaiso University (VU) campus community through shared undergraduate research experiences, as well as skill‐building and social activities. Goals of the EPIC grant include improving recruiting and retention of STM students, increasing the number of STM graduates prepared for research careers, and increasing the number of research intensive majors within STM departments. Students are recruited with scholarships averaging $5,300 per year.During year 0 the EPIC program developed the infrastructure and tools to recruit, select, enroll, and support the first cohort of students in fall 2017. We report the results of our recruitment initiatives on the poster. In year 1 we refined these practices to include earlier and more varied contact with high schools. Recruitment of the second cohort is underway.Assessment procedures were initiated through the establishment of pre‐EPIC baselines measuring retention, academic, and demographic data for STM students at VU. Data were collected through institutional research and multiple student surveys. This data includes GPAs, STM student retention, graduation rates, and the impact of undergraduate research. Some data is broken down demographically according to gender, race, ethnicity, and commuter status. Preliminary analysis revealed several notable results, such as a 44% retention rate for STM students remaining in their original major and 25% of VU STM students from the 2012 freshman cohort not graduating at all. Additionally, VU commuters are less likely to be retained in a STM major and are less likely to graduate. This group of students is the primary focus of the EPIC program; we predict that our model will improve their retention numbers.Support or Funding InformationThis work was supported by award # 1564855 from the National Science Foundation.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.