Colleges Fight to Retain Interest of STEM Majors

Schools are trying increase the number of students who graduate in STEM majors.

Experts estimate that less than 40 percent of students who enter college as STEM majors actually wind up earning a degree in science, technology, engineering or math.

Those who don't make it to the finish line typically change course early on. Just ask Mallory Hytes Hagan, better known as Miss America 2013.

Hagan enrolled at Auburn University as a biomedical science major, but transferred to the Fashion Institute of Technology a year later to pursue a career in cosmetics and fragrance marketing.

"I found out I wasn't as prepared as I should be," Hagan said during a panel discussion today at the 2013 U.S. News STEM Solutions conference in Austin. "I hit that first chem lab and thought, 'Whoa. What's going on?'"

[Discover which top-ranked colleges grant the most STEM degrees.]

Her story is a common one. New STEM students often feel isolated, discouraged and overwhelmed when they get to college, but several schools are making strides to reverse that trend.

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana is one of those schools. The private college uses small class sizes to help foster connections between professors and students, said Phillip Cornwell, vice president of academic affairs at Rose-Hulman, during a separate panel on STEM majors at Tuesday's conference.

"Rather than having a single class of 200, we'll have eight sessions of 30, all taught by professors," Cornwell said.

The intimate classroom setting helps professors identify who is struggling before they drop the class or switch majors, he added.

Additionally, Rose-Hulman surveys each faculty member and resident adviser working with freshmen to identify academic and attendance issues. The school also has a retention task force, which meets biweekly to look at where and why they lose students, and figure out ways to plug the leak, Cornwell said.

[Learn why the STEM disconnect leaves women, minorities behind.]

Making course work relevant for students as early as possible is one of the ways the academic development program Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement helps ensure STEM students progress through college. Administered by the University of California school system, MESA serves mostly low-income, first-generation college students.

"For the communities we're working with, there is very little knowledge of what it may be like to be a scientist or engineer," said Oscar Porter, the program's executive director, during the panel on STEM majors.

Getting students engaged in their career path early on through internships and lab time is essential to student retention, said Porter.

For students in the MESA program, that may mean visiting Driscoll's in Watsonville, Calif. One of the world's largest berry suppliers, Driscoll's is a major employer in the area and relies heavily on immigrant farm workers.

Instead of walking the fields, students spend time in the laboratory, Porter said.

"They get to think of themselves as scientists while, in many cases, their parents are working in the fields right outside," he said.

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Colleges Work to Retain Women in STEM Majors

Dorms dedicated exclusively to female engineers help foster a sense of community and offer support for students.

STEM fields suffer from an image problem. Often seen as a boys club or a path for geeks, colleges struggle to attract and retain women in science, technology, engineering and math majors.

Only about 25 percent of STEM degree holders are women, due largely to a lack of female college students studying engineering, computer science and physical sciences such as physics and chemistry, according to reports.

"I never felt like I was at a disadvantage because there were so many men in the room, but it was definitely noticeable," says Sarah Hefter Flanigan, who earned a bachelor's and master's in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech and Cornell University, respectively. "You had to learn to interact with people in an academic and social environment where you were outnumbered."

Flanigan's drive to achieve her childhood dream – to be an astronaut and a Hokie – helped her overcome any STEM gender gap, but being outnumbered can be daunting for some aspiring female scientists and mathematicians.

"For me, it was obviously intimidating," says Amyriz Garcia, a civil engineering student at the University of Texas—Austin. "I was in an engineering major and being around engineers is kind of intimidating – especially men."

[See which top-ranked schools grant the most STEM degrees.]

Colleges and universities are working to stymie that feeling via outreach and mentoring programs.

"We're really trying to build that community so if they are the only woman in a class or on a project team they don't feel like the only one," says Tricia Berry, director of UT—Austin's Women in Engineering program. Female students account for just 10 to 15 percent of students in certain engineering majors at the university, Berry says.

Schools such as UT—Austin and Virginia Tech use learning communities to create that sense of belonging. These programs put new students in residence halls with more experienced female engineering students who can mentor them along the way.

Women in these dorms live, study and play together – volunteering for community service and competing on intramural sports teams – giving them the support system male students have had all along, Bevlee Watford, associate dean of academic affairs at Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, said at the U.S. News STEM Solutions conference last month.

[Discover the best engineering programs for undergrads.]

Roughly 1,000 of the school's 1,300 freshman engineering students last year were men. Those men can shout down the hall and easily find one or two students able to help them on a calculus problem, said Watford, who recalled feeling isolated as the only engineer on her floor when she attended Virginia Tech in the 1980s.

"No question this is in some way impacting students' ability to keep going through the engineering curriculum," said Watford, noting that the five-year graduation rate for women in these residence communities was 82 percent compared with 65 percent for all students.

Living in an all-female section of a residence hall as an undergraduate at Michigan Technological University helped Kaitlyn Bunker overlook the gender gap in her program.

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