Thank you for visiting our video, which highlights the work of our 2-year INCLUDES design and development launch pilot. During the pilot, we assessed four STEM precollege programs at the University of Pittsburgh that serve our urban community to develop an alternate pathway to undergraduate admissions at Pitt. Our video presents the findings of our pilot as well as where we see this project going in the future. We are especially interested in feedback from other precollege programs as well as undergraduate institutions regarding any challenges groups have faced in assessing student participation in precollege programs for admissions decisions.

This is an awesome program! The "STEM success matrix you developed looks really useful and empowering to educators who want to diversify their student population while maintaining (or raising) the quality of the students at their institution. I especially like how you worked with your admissions office to translate your findings into a pathway for URM students to matriculate to U Pittsburgh. I do have a couple of questions:

1) How exactly did you get your admissions office to buy into the "STEM success matrix"? Were they willing partners or did you have to convince to accept your work? I am sure others will want to know how to get their own admissions offices to buy into a similar effort.

2) Have you published your "STEM success matrix"? If you haven't, you should! The fact that you did so much research into the literature and worked to validate your work is impressive and needs to be disseminated.

3) How has your increased URM admissions translated to student success? Is the university supporting the students once they arrive on campus? Are you tracking those students to see if they succeed once they are at U Pittsburgh?

4) Could the lessons you learned about evaluating students as applicants be applied once they are at your university?

Again, congratulations on a wonderful program. I hope you are able to spread the word!

Very interesting approach to accrediting pre-college programs. I agree with Alex that this should be published and shared. So many institutions have had pre-college programs for years.  One of the difficulties in assessing impact has been tracking what happens to student participants.  Where do they go on to college and how successful are they when they enter.   Your program can help.

Have you thought about joining with NABI? This is a national broader impact group that shares many such strategies.

NABI-L@PO.MISSOURI.EDU <NABI-L@PO.MISSOURI.EDU>

I'd also love to know how U Pitt's programs are supported.  As someone who had worked in this arena for many years, one of the chief obstacles encountered by many centers and PCPs is tht when grant funding goes away, the instituion cancels the staff necessary to make these happen.  How did you persuade Pitt to invest?  What are some tips for others?

Your STEM success matrix looks like a really useful tool. Do you think it could also apply to students already in college as well? I would of course like to echo the others in I would love to see this shared somewhere because I would definitely use it as a resource.

This assessment of PCPs is great!

I am curious as to why you examined standardized tests to determine persistence in STEM seeing as how the ACT and SAT are not touted as predictors of STEM persistence.  At best they test a basic knowledge of data interpretation/manipulation, and a very limited understanding of the scientific method.  It seems the metric of preparedness or performance in first-year science courses would be more suitable. 

As, perhaps, another layer to your "Knowledge & Skills" or "Habits of Mind" sections, what did your analyses determine of study skills.  A major disconnect between secondary school STEM and college STEM (project-based learning curricula excluded) is how students study and acquire knowledge.  College STEM is not (or not supposed to be) regurgitation of textbook jargon.  Perhaps this falls under critical thinking skills, but enforcing proper study habits in STEM is crucial to persistence because it teaches students how to break up, acquire, and retain knowledge. 

Hi Stephen,

Wonderful questions. Thank you for contributing to this discussion. I will address only the first question and leave the rest to my colleagues. 

We specifically examined the predictive power of standardized tests on STEM persistence because board scores are still one of the primary tools used by admissions officers across the country to determine 'college readiness.' To their defense, it is one of the only standardized metrics that is available to them, but we wanted to determine if at our University there is a correlation between SAT/ACT scores and STEM persistence over the past 12 years. Of course, we found that there is a correlation, however there is a stronger correlation between board scores and race/ethnicity demonstrating a racial component to standardized tests (as has been shown previously) and the weakness of the global applicability of their usage for college admissions at least in STEM. This is why we argue for the development of a more holistic application/review process and we hope to identify measurable metrics (such as participation in quality precollege programs) that can augment or supplant board scores.   

Thank you for visiting and viewing our video!  We appreciate your time and feedback!! This video highlights our NSF INCLUDES 2 year DDLP.  Our video presents the findings of our pilot as well as where we see this project going in the future.

I"m in Pittsburgh and it's great to hear that this is happening right here. Sounds like great work - keep it up!