After years of emphasis on increasing graduates in science, technology, engineering and math fields, or STEM, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville is looking to a previously untapped source - transfer students from the state’s two-year colleges.
For at least a decade, UA and the state’s other top research universities have been experimenting with ways to attract more students to STEM fields, even before more recent efforts by stategovernment.
Although those fields of study are considered key to filling high-demand, high-paying jobs, their accessibility for many of Arkansas’ low-income or first-generation college students is perceived to be low.
The Fayetteville campus in the past looked to demographics that were underrepresented in the fields, such as women and minority groups, as ways to recruit students. But recently, UA recognized two-year college-transfer students as another source.
Educators are devising a strategy to create 23 foundation courses for online study in prerequisite subjects such as calculus and physics to better prepare transfer students for the rigors of the university’s degree programs in STEM fields. They have applied for a National Science Foundation grant that could accelerate the development, officials said.
Bryan Hill, a UA engineering recruiter, wrote the grant application. All 22 of Arkansas’ public two-year colleges wrote letters supporting the university’s effort.
“I’m not sure this has ever been done before,” said Hill, assistant dean of student recruitment, honors and international programs in UA’s College of Engineering. “It was truly a statewide effort.”
DESIGNING THE PROGRAM
UA attracts students from almost every one of the state’s two-year colleges, Hill said.
“They’re just not succeeding once they transfer,” he said.
If transfer students haven’t taken the university’sprerequisite series of calculus courses, “They come in as freshman in the eyes of our curriculum,” he said, despite having a two-year associate’s degree under their belt.
In a written explanation of the program, UA officials said students who had taken Calculus II were nearly twice as likely to graduate with an engineering degree within six years as students who had taken no calculus or only Calculus I.
Only three of Arkansas’ 22 two-year colleges offer Calculus II or higher, while only two offer calculus-based physics, UA says.
Because of low demand at their individual campuses, it’s usually not cost-effective for community colleges to offer calculus courses or what’s described as calculus-based physics, Hill said.
If UA receives the science foundation grant, it would be able to roll out the 23 courses in 1½ years, Hill said. The university plans to create the courses, anyway, though without the grant it would take “many, many years,” he said.
For now, the university is in the process of designing the first four online courses, all freshman-level prerequisites: Calculus I, Calculus II, University Physics I and introduction to engineering.
Other than UA’s Engineering College, other partners are its J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, which houses physics and other sciences; UA Global Campus, which designs online courses; and Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, which has two math faculty members working with three UA math faculty members on designing the new courses.
Hill noted that while the Fayetteville campus hopes transfer students will want to use their online credits to continue their education at UA, they are free to transfer them to any other university in or outside Arkansas.
A NEW FORMULA
On July 1, the Arkansas Department of Higher Education added a performance-based component to its higher-education funding formula that takes into account measures such as STEM education and graduation rates.
The complicated formula begins by phasing in the performance factors at 5 percent of the overall formula, rising to 25 percent of the formula by the 2017-18 school year.
Tara Smith, the department’s senior associate director for institutional finance, noted that the state Legislature built in a provision that could put the outcomes-centered formula on hold beginning in the 2014-15 school year until the department determines that all public universities and colleges are funded at a “minimum standard of equity,” meaning 75 percent of their needs as determined by the overall formula.
Officials with UA, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Arkansas State University in Jonesboro said their universities’ efforts have been in place for years and aren’t influenced by the new performance funding.
UA Provost Sharon Gaber said, “It really had nothing to do with it. STEM, it’s really part of our mission.”OUTREACH EFFORTS
At UALR, the classic approach of using science camps, robotics competitions and other outreach programs for youth is still favored by one of its recruiters.
“We focus on grades six through 12,” said Vernard Henley Jr., director of recruitment and outreach at UALR’s College of Engineering and Information Technology. The events focus on activities that make science fun by applying theories to real-world situations.
In his professional experience and in his own life, Henley believes the pivotal moment when a person discovers his passion tends to occur during play as a child.
“When most people decide what they want to be, usually it happened early on,” Henley said. “If you wait until a student’s a junior or senioryear in high school, it’s too late.
“If you’ve never seen an engineer, if you’ve never seen a computer scientist - you’re not going to convince a kid to be something that they’ve never seen.”
For example, Henley, who earned a civil engineering degree, grew up playing with Hot Wheels cars with his brother, Wade. Henley said they applied some civil engineering principles, doing the math and theory with their hands so the cars wouldn’t fly off the track.
“I would think: How much space is that layout going to take? Do we need a 9-inch or 12-inch radius curve?” Henley said. “So I was doing geometry, I was doing some of the algebra, I was doing ratios. I was doing civil engineering, but I didn’t know I was doing it at the time.”
In the mid-1970s, Henley attended a high school summer camp at the Georgia Institue of Technology aimed at recruiting minority groups to engineering. Henley, who is black, would learn that the theories he used as a child had mathematical formulas and names. His brother, who liked numbers, went on to become an industrial engineer.
These days, he enjoys helping young students unite their passions with real scientific theories, using free or low-cost programs. These include UALR’s homegrown programs and some federal programs.
Demand is so high for the programs that UALR can give spots to only 38 percent of youth who apply, Henley said.
A RANGE OF POSSIBILITIES
John M. Pratte of ASU said it’s hard to say whether efforts to recruit and retain students for STEM fields are more effective when they’re younger.
“That’s the $64 million question,” said Pratte, dean of ASU’s College of Sciences and Mathematics. “Science education people say you need to get them while they’re young. But, you haven’t necessarily lost them when they’re older.”
Like UA, ASU spreads the initiatives around, including programs for youth through college-age students.
Pratte said he has found that it’s key for educators to help students see all the potential career possibilities in a particular undergraduate degree. Without guidance, their perspective can be limited, he said.
He cited the example of a student who majors in chemistry thinking he wants to become a doctor but who later decides against attending medical school, he said. Then the student wonders whether to continue pursuing that degree.
“What can’t you do with a chemistry degree?” Pratte tells students before outlining some options. Paired with a law degree, a student could become a patent attorney or a science journalist.
That’s the idea behind the SMART Center the Jonesboro campus plans to open this fall, he said. The acronym stands for Sciences Mathematics Advisement Retention and Tracking.
“The SMART center would be opening your eyes to the kind of careers available to a person with a science degree,” Pratte said. “’Once I get through this process, what will I be able to do?’ For someone who’s a first-generation student, that’s a huge cloud bank.”
It also will help ASU’s students, many of whom are from Arkansas’ Delta, prepare for professional-school exams, compose resumes and develop skills to help themapply for graduate school. Other help will include explaining one’s research to the public and nonpeer scientists.
As for youth, Pratte said, ASU works with them on science projects that include launching high-altitude weather balloons, studying water and air quality and working with farmers on natural means to banish rice weevils from silos.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 08/04/2013