Development of a Distance Education Program by a Land-Grant University Augments the 2-Year to 4-Year STEM Pipeline and Increases Diversity in STEM

<div><p>Although initial interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is high, recruitment and retention remains a challenge, and some populations are disproportionately underrepresented in STEM fields. To address these challenges, the Microbiology and Cell Science Department in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Florida has developed an innovative 2+2 degree program. Typical 2+2 programs begin with a student earning an associate’s degree at a local community college and then transferring to a 4-year institution to complete a bachelor’s degree. However, many universities in the United States, particularly land-grant universities, are located in rural regions that are distantly located from their respective states’ highly populated urban centers. This geographical and cultural distance could be an impediment to recruiting otherwise highly qualified and diverse students. Here, a new model of a 2+2 program is described that uses distance education as the vehicle to bring a research-intensive university’s life sciences curriculum to students rather than the oft-tried model of a university attempting to recruit underrepresented minority students to its location. In this paradigm, community college graduates transfer into the Microbiology and Cell Science program as distance education students to complete their Bachelor of Science degree. The distance education students’ experiences are similar to the on-campus students’ experiences in that both groups of students take the same department courses taught by the same instructors, take required laboratory courses in a face-to-face format, take only proctored exams, and have the same availability to instructors. Data suggests that a hybrid online transfer program may be a viable approach to increasing STEM participation (as defined by enrollment) and diversity. This approach is particularly compelling as the distance education cohort has comparable grade point averages and retention rates compared to the corresponding on-campus transfer cohort.</p></div

Distribution of races and ethnicities for the Fall 2014 enrollment in the Microbiology and Cell Science major within the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

<p>Racial/ethnic groups who are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields are in blue while those groups who are not underrepresented in STEM are in green. The proportions of individuals with two or more races, nonresident aliens, or race unknown are represented in shades of gray.</p

Retention of transfer students who enrolled in the Microbiology and Cell Science major within the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences in Fall 2011 and Fall 2012.

<p>Retention equals the proportion of students who have graduated and persist in the program. Retention levels between the two cohorts are not statistically different (p = 0.10, two tailed Fisher's Exact Test).</p

Box plots representing the average grade point average (GPA) of MCS majors within CALS.

<p>The horizontal lines represent the median GPA of students in the Fall 2013 semester (left box plot) and at the time of graduation (right box plot). The boxes represent the interquartile range (IQR). The IQR includes the 50% of samples closest to the median. The lines above and below the IQR, represent either 1.5 times the IQR or the maximum range of the samples if that range is below 1.5 times the IQR. The dots above or below these lines represent outliers that are above or below 1.5 times the IQRs. As determined by Kruskal-Wallis, the on-campus cohort had a statistically higher mean GPA than the on-campus transfer cohort (p = 0.031) but not the DE MCS cohort (p = 0.118) in the Fall 2013 semester (H = 8.5, df = 2). The mean GPAs of the two transfer cohorts were not statistically different (p = 0.956). At the time of graduation, as depicted in the right box plot, the on-campus transfer cohort had a statistically lower mean GPA than the on-campus cohort (p = 0.00016), but there was no statistical difference between the mean graduating GPAs of the on-campus and DE MCS students (p = 0.995) nor the on-campus transfer and DE MCS cohort (p = 0.269) (H = 16.5, df = 2).</p

Enrollment by students into the Microbiology and Cell Science major across time.

<p>a) transfer student enrollments in the on-campus (blue) and distance education (red) and b) first time in college (FTIC) students enrolled in the College of Agricultural and Life Science (blue) or College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (red) Microbiology and Cell Science major.</p

Demographics of survey respondents.

<p>The number of responses (y-axes) for each of the demographic variables (x-axes) on the survey, as follows: (A) Gender. (B) Race (People of Color and White); four categories in Race—American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander—were combined into People of Color (POC) due to very small sample numbers for each category. (C) Ethnicity (Hispanic-Latino, non-Hispanic/Latino). (D) Minority Serving (whether or not the respondent’s home institution is classified as minority-serving). (E) Highest Degree (highest degree earned: Bachelor’s, Master’s, Professional Degree, PhD). (F) Year Earned (year that the highest degree was earned; responses were grouped in the following bins: Before 1980, 1980 to 1989, 1990 to 1999, 2000 to 2009, and After 2009). (G) Training (level of bioinformatics training: None, Self-taught, Short workshop, Undergraduate/PostBacc training, Graduate class, and Graduate degree); four categories in Training—Undergraduate course, Undergraduate certificate, Undergraduate degree, and Post-baccalaureate certificate—were grouped together into “Undergrad” (undergraduate/post-baccalaureate training) due to small sample numbers in these categories. (H) Carnegie (Carnegie classification of the respondent’s home institution: Associate’s, Baccalaureate, Master’s, Doctoral). (I) Total Students (total number of students at the respondent’s home institution). (J) Total Undergraduates (number of undergraduates at the respondent’s home institution). (K) Undergraduate Majors (number of undergraduate majors in the respondent’s home department). (L) Faculty (number of faculty in the respondent’s home department).</p

Mean Likert responses for S3 (<i>Statistics</i>) and S13 (<i>Scripting</i>).

<p>Mean Likert responses are shown for (A) S3 (<i>Statistics</i>) and (B) S13 (<i>Scripting</i>) for three categories: Carnegie (Carnegie Classification of the respondent’s home institution: Associate’s, Baccalaureate, Master’s, Doctoral), Year Earned (year that the highest degree was earned; responses were grouped in the following bins: Before 1980, 1980 to 1989, 1990 to 1999, 2000 to 2009, and After 2009), and Training (level of bioinformatics training: None, Self-taught, Short workshop, Undergraduate/PostBacc training, Graduate class, and Graduate degree). Means and <i>P</i> values from pairwise KS tests are reported in [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0196878#pone.0196878.ref034" target="_blank">34</a>].</p

Responses by degree.

<p>Responses by degree.</p

Importance of the fifteen bioinformatics skills as rated by survey respondents compared to coverage of the skills in the syllabi.

<p>Skills are shown with the proportion of survey responses rating the skill as either “Very Important” or “Extremely Important” (blue bars) and the proportion of submitted syllabi that exhibited evidence of the skill (grey bars). Skills requiring familiarity with a concept (“knowing” skills) are to the left of the vertical dashed line; skills requiring direct engagement (“practice” skills) are to the right. In their respective categories, skills are presented in order of decreasing proportion of survey responses rating the skill as Very or Extremely Important.</p

Summary of bioinformatics skills ratings.

<p>The total number of responses (y-axes) by Likert-scale rating from 1 to 5 (x-axes)—1 being “Not at all important” to 5 being “Extremely important”—for each of the fifteen survey skills, S1 to S15, labeled in sequence from (A) to (O). As discussed in Results, these skills were divided into two broad categories: skills that just required familiarity (“knowing” skills: S1 to S4, S6, S8, S10), and those that required direct engagement (“practicing” skills: S5, S7, S9, S11 to S15).</p