Enroll three cohorts of low-income, academically talented students as WPU's Mathematics and Computer Science (MaCS) scholars and support them with: scholarship funding towards cost of attendance (up to $10,000 per year for up to four years), culturally responsive mentoring, academic support, summer research and internship opportunities, conference and presentation support, the support of a community of peers in similiar majors, networking opportunities, career advice. Improve year over year retention rates for MaCS Scholars who are first-time, full-time, first-year or transfer students; Improve graduation rates for all MaCS Scholars; Perform a research study that investigates the relationship between college retention for low-income students and strength-based, culturally responsive mentoring. The project will also refine the recruitment pipeline of females into the target STEM majors. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under NSF Grant # 2028011.
