I get by with a little help from my PEEPS: Learning from an NSF S-STEM cohort scholarship program

Abstract

PEEPS (Program for Engineering Excellence for Partner Schools) is an NSF S-STEM funded grant. In our third year of the project, we report some of the formative assessment of the scholarship program. Currently our students are in their 2nd and 3rd years in various engineering programs at a 4-year university. We find some interesting differences between our two cohorts of PEEPS, in terms of their transition from high school to college, their subsequent performance in college, and the interactions among and across the cohorts. While our cohort sizes are quite small, we are able to delve deeper into understanding individual student's experiences and perspectives through surveys, periodic check-ins, social events, and an end-of-the-year focus group facilitated by a project evaluator. We not only report common institutional indicators, such as grade point averages and degree progress, but we will also integrate quantitative and qualitative findings that help us discern the effectiveness of different program components (e.g., cohort scheduling, study sessions, engineering success courses, mentoring, advising, and social events). The utilization and perceived benefit of available resources by the students is examined. We also describe some of our efforts in developing the metacognitive and self-regulation skills of the PEEPS students. Lastly, we propose next steps that examine institutional impacts.