Undergraduate STEM student reflections on the academic support ecosystem at a rural Minority Serving Institution: The importance of relationship

Authors

Stephany RunningHawk Johnson, Washington State UniversityFollow
Jessica L. Black, Heritage UniversityFollow
Karolynn Tom, Yakima Valley CollegeFollow

Keywords

Hispanic Serving Institution, STEM education, COVID, Indigenous, Native American, and Latine URM students

Abstract

This paper presents a research project with a group of STEM majoring undergraduates attending a Hispanic Serving Institution participating in the CRESCENT program intended to support undergraduates through their basic math and science courses. The research questions addressed in this paper include: What part of CRESCENT were students utilizing the most and how were they helpful? How did CRESCENT support students through COVID? What can we learn from this data to make future programs more responsive and relevant to STEM majoring students? We found that during COVID students were missing in person contact, had heightened responsibilities and distractions at home, faced communication challenges, needed their professors/instructors support, many lacked reliable internet access and technology, and found tutoring resources that went online to be crucial to their success. Because CRESCENT was in place, many of these issues were able to be addressed quickly. Additional findings indicate that relationships were a crucial component for success, as they are and remain during non-COVID times. Respect and support for both students and faculty were important and necessary. STEM faculty do not often get credit for the relationships and connections they need to create for and with their students; this study shows that they should get this credit - not many students highlighted the course content, but most talked about the relationships that existed and the support they felt from instructors and CRESCENT program staff. This study highlights the importance of small, community-based educational opportunities.

DOI

10.15760/nwjte.2025.20.2.4

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44288

Recommended Citation

RunningHawk Johnson, Stephany; Black, Jessica L.; and Tom, Karolynn (2025) "Undergraduate STEM student reflections on the academic support ecosystem at a rural Minority Serving Institution: The importance of relationship," Northwest Journal of Teacher Education: Vol. 20 : Iss. 2 , Article 4.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15760/nwjte.2025.20.2.4