As an undergraduate student at the University of Toledo, Aaron Poole saw his STEM career dreams slip away when he struggled initially in the school's pre-pharmacy program and needed to switch majors.
Now, a decade later, as the program manager for the new SELF program--STEM Emerging Leaders Fellows--Poole is determined to help his charges in STEM majors succeed where he once stumbled. "I believe we need STEM students from different backgrounds and different cultures," said Poole, the SELF program manager. "One of the things that really made me want to be involved in this program is because I didn't have anything like it, and so I know how difficult it can be."
SELF launched this fall after Ohio State was one of only six research institutions nationwide to be awarded a $2.5 million Driving Change grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The 30 SELF fellows in the inaugural class are receiving scholarship funding to support their academic career.
Poole said all incoming fellows participated in a one-week residential, early-arrival program designed to build relationships with other STEM scholars, provide them with specific academic success strategies and resources for academic excellence in STEM, and introduce them to a range of faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Other components of the SELF program include access to personal advising and success coaching, research, faculty engagement and industry involvement, peer mentoring, professional development opportunities, academic tutoring and supplemental instruction, career readiness and internship opportunities, education abroad, and global experiences.
"STEM courses in high school are completely different than STEM courses in college, and some students are caught off-guard," Poole said. "The first year our focus will be on getting them to see themselves as engineers and scientists and helping them to develop leadership and social skills."
Beyond the new program run by ODI, other portions of the grant will be used to reevaluate how STEM is taught by faculty across the university and develop a STEM Gateway Learning Center aimed at serving as a home base for STEM students.
"SELF represents an acceleration of an effort to create inclusive cultures that will enable all students to flourish," said Yolanda Zepeda, the interim vice-provost for diversity and inclusion. "This kind of work has the potential to change the face of STEM fields for future generations.”