The objective of the Merit Fellows project is to focus on academically talented, financially disadvantaged STEM students participating in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Merit Program for Emerging Scholars. The Merit Program, established in 1989 at UIUC, is proving to be successful in recruiting and graduating students in the STEM disciplines. Nineteen (19) full time majors in Chemistry, Integrative Biology (IB), and Mathematics (recruited in cohorts) are to be provided with scholarships for their entire undergraduate experience. The university is committed to financially supporting all students through graduation.
The intellectual merit of the project lies in the project design that is based on strong evidence that enhanced support services provided through additional advising, a wide variety of cohort-building activities, and a mentoring program (peer and faculty) are highly successful in retaining students in STEM majors. Scholarships for the maximum amount possible reduce the need for students to work part-time during the academic year. Multiple evaluation efforts are to be implemented to assess the impact of the extra funds and services on the students' performance and persistence in STEM majors. The project is to be directed by expert and experienced PIs.
The broader impacts of the program are in its efforts to retain students from small rural high schools, females, and underrepresented minorities at higher rates than has been possible in the past. The evaluation of this project is to be used to request institutionalization of the Faculty and Peer mentoring program. Additionally the results of the project are to be incorporated into the development strategy of each department with the specific goal of securing corporate and private funding to support continuation and expansion of the scholarship program. The Merit Fellows Scholarship Program is potentially a model for dissemination to other institutions to adopt and adapt to their own context. A website is to be used as a recruitment tool and to record success stories and quotes from Merit Fellows. A description of the Merit Fellow Program including evaluation results will be made available in future publications and presentations by Merit Directors.
