Georgia Institute of Technology

Paving the Road into College and STEM for Latino Students

Diley Hernandez, Marion Usselman, Shaheen Rana, Meltem Alemdar, and Analia Rao
JSO - Journal of STEM Outreach - Vol. 1, No. 2, April 2018 Pages 35-47

The purpose of this study is to thoroughly describe a program designed to strengthen the pipeline of Latino students into post-secondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, and present evaluation data to assess multiyear effectiveness. The program includes a suite of interventions aimed at students and families, and was implemented in a low-income school cluster with a high Latino population in metro Atlanta. Our intervention includes a high school and middle school mentoring program, STEM-focused extracurricular activities (summer camps, research and community service opportunities), and college and STEM career-focused community events for families. Results suggest that GoSTEM has a positive impact on students and families with respect to college and career awareness. The mentoring program  components  also  increase  students’  college  readiness  and  self-regulatory  skills  at  the  high  school level. The  extracurricular programs support this effort by increasing students’ STEM-related content knowledge and learning, and their understanding about STEM careers for both high school and middle school students. Lessons learned are also presented to help guide other practitioners of Latino outreach programs.

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