Pre-college summer program in entrepreneurial and design thinking influences STEM success for African American students

Abstract

Sustained innovation and economic strength of the U.S depends on a greater participation of underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). University-based outreach programs that serve African American and other minority populations should do more to infuse invention education in activities that engage pre-college students from these groups to motivate them to pursue STEM degrees. The Research, Discovery, and Innovation (RDI) Summer Institute is a design and science entrepreneurship program that is offered at North Carolina Central University to high school seniors who have been accepted for admission to a STEM degree program at the university. This study found the RDI Summer Institute program to be effective based on proximal outcomes of gains in composite entrepreneurial thinking skills (entrepreneurial, managerial, engineering design, and technical skills) as perceived by the participants and measured by pre- and post-surveys. Eighty-seven percent of the pre-college participants were African Americans, showed high levels of creativity and innovativeness, and presented product ideas that were conscientious in meeting their community needs. Program impact was assessed based on near-term and distal academic outcomes in college through a rigorously designed quasi-experiment which compared 31 case-control matched pairs of students who had been RDI participants and non-RDI participants. A conditional logistic regression showed first-year retention in STEM degree programs for students who had been RDI participants was five times that of students who had been non-RDI participants. Additionally, first-year STEM retention in differential comparisons favored female students, students from very low/low SES households, and students from single parent households. Also, students who had been RDI participants performed higher in STEM gatekeeper courses, and a strong positive impact of the RDI Summer Institute program was associated with higher STEM persistence even two and three years after pre-college students participated.