PEER MENTORING IN MIXED GROUP REU COHORTS TO IMPROVE PERSISTENCE OF URM STUDENTS IN GEOSCIENCES, NEWARK, NJ

The Dynamic Urban Environmental Science and Sustainability (DUESS) REU site recruits a mix of community college and 4-year primarily underrepresented minority (URM) students that form a self-supporting community of fellows through peer mentoring. The program is a residential research experience at Rutgers University, Newark with professional development and a capstone poster presentation using the AGU Virtual Poster Showcase. Fellows are divided into research areas of environmental geophysics, environmental geochemistry and urban ecology in roughly even distributions. The 12-14 student cohorts of are primarily recruited from the Garden State LSAMP and collaborating Northern New Jersey Bridges to the Baccalaureate program and included 14 4-year students and 24 community college students in the first 3 years. Of the 38 REU fellows, 79% were from URM groups. The students from 4-year colleges were generally better prepared for research than community college students. However, they took it upon themselves to mentor the less prepared students. They formed small collaborative groups within each of the research areas where this mentoring took place on a personal level. The mentoring quickly brought the community college students nearly to the proficiency of the 4-year college students in most cases. The 4-year college students also benefitted through the Protégé Effect where they took on the responsibility to persist and achieve success to set an example for the community college students. The results to date are that all 4-year students are continuing their education or careers in Earth and Environmental sciences (EES). All but 1 of the 24 community college students are continuing in STEM and all students who graduated with their Associates degree continued into a Bachelor’s program to date. Even though none of the community college students entered as EES majors, to date, 5 are now pursuing EES majors and several are pursuing minors. Of the 5 African American DUESS fellows from Rutgers University, 4 (all female) are now fully funded in PhD programs at very good institutions.