MaCS Scholars Program Objectives

Phase II

  • Objective 1 – Recruitment: Recruit, select and enroll 40 low-income, academically-talented students in three cohorts with roughly half First-Time-in-College Students and half Transfer students.

  • Objective 2 – Retention: With a system of integrated support services including scholarship funding, faculty mentoring, cohort activities and research opportunities, improve retention rates for MaCS II Scholars:
    • (2A) who are First-Time Students from a first-year baseline rate of 69-81% to ≥85%;
    • (2B) who are First-Time Students from a second-year baseline rate of 48-56% to ≥85%;
    • (2C) who are Transfer Students from a first-year baseline of 80% to ≥85%.

  • Objective 3 – Graduation: Improve graduation rates for MaCS II Scholars:
    • (3A) who are First-Time Students from a four-year baseline of 20-24% to ≥85%;
    • (3B) who are Transfer Students from a three-year baseline of 33-80% to ≥85%.

  • Objective 4 – Generation of Knowledge: Report to interested audiences on the evaluation findings of the program, including recruitment effectiveness, the impact of its industry engagement approaches, retention in STEM, and graduation rates.

Phase I

  • 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.

NSFLogo

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under NSF Phase I Grant #2028011 (2020-2026) and Phase II Grant #2527737 (2026-2032).