Impacts Pre-Freshman Immersion Summer Programs have on STEM undergraduate minority students in a Hispanic Serving Institution: An Exploratory Design
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55420/2693.9193.v10.n1.300Keywords:
BootCamp, scientific reasoning, quantitative reasoning, self-efficacyAbstract
The School of Science and Technology (SST) of the Universidad Ana G. Mendez- Carolina Campus implemented a Pre-Freshman Summer Immersion Program known as "BootCamp" for minority STEM undergraduate students through the U.S. Department of Education. Freshman students tend to enter university without certain skills needed to succeed during their first year. The objective of the program is to reinforce quantitative reasoning, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning competencies and help students adapt to university life through self-efficacy and coping skills. To accomplish these objectives Bootcamp was organized as a two-week intervention, focusing on basic mathematical concepts that the students found difficult during their first year of undergraduate studies. Also, the program offered critical thinking development with case studies focused on science and engineering scenarios. A descriptive-exploratory design involving a sample size of 39 students from the SST was used. The results are obtained from four standardized tests and first-semester math grades. The results show that participants in the BootCamp need to reinforce quantitative reasoning skills needed by freshmen students to succeed along the path to complete studies that lead them into careers in STEM.
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