Designing and Deploying a Student Engagement Survey for the STEM Center of Excellence

Submitted by Cory Buckband on
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What is the Purpose of the Assessment?
  • The STEM Center of Excellence (STEM CoE) at Estrella Mountain Community College (EMCC) serves as a dynamic hub that oversees, coordinates, and hosts both the STEM Ambassador peer mentoring program and Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) program. By providing centralized resources, expertise, and shared infrastructure - such as training, administrative support, and data systems - the Center strengthens the programs it supports and ensures they coordinate efficiently and use resources wisely. Acting as a focal point for communication and collaboration, STEM CoE connects students, faculty, and external partners to foster meaningful partnerships, such as research activities with Mayo Clinic and other organizations in the West Valley and Maricopa County. Through strategic alignment with the college’s broader goals, the STEM Center helps these programs stay focused and impactful while also building capacity and encouraging innovative practices that benefit the entire STEM learning community.
  • The purpose of this assessment is to use a student survey to evaluate the ways in which students engage with the STEM Center of Excellence and its two programs. 
  • Another goal of the assessment is to gain a deeper understanding of STEM students’ beliefs about STEM education and STEM careers.
  • This survey was part of a larger IRB-approved mixed-method evaluation study of the STEM Center of Excellence and EMCC’s URE program. This evaluation study was approved by EMCC and MCCCD Institutional Review Boards (IRB) for Human Subjects research. Please contact Cory Buckband ([email protected]) about any questions. 
Describe the necessity for this assessment
  • Internally, it is crucial to collect data regarding the effectiveness of the STEM Center of Excellence. Having sustainable data collection measures in place enables program staff and others to (1) showcase the program’s positive impacts on students and faculty; (2) explain these impacts to community members and other external interest-holders such as funding organizations; and (3) learn about areas of growth to continuously improve the Center’s program offerings and activities. 
    • Also internally, OPIE data and data from this student survey highlights that EMCC’s STEM students are predominantly from marginalized backgrounds, communities, and identity groups that are under-represented in STEM. For instance, 77.5% of EMCC’s STEM-declared students identify as being from a racially or ethnically minoritized group and 57.5% as first-generation college students. Additionally, 83.9% of STEM students attend EMCC part-time, which implies they may have other responsibilities outside of school that are important considerations for designing co-curricular programs and planning instruction. 

 

  • Externally, there is a growing body of scholarly literature demonstrating that young adults from racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically minoritized or disadvantaged backgrounds are increasingly likely to face severe challenges in attaining STEM postsecondary education, entering the STEM workforce, and remaining in STEM careers(1). Exacerbating this issue, the current U.S. Federal administration has shifted away from an explicit focus on programming that contributes to equitable representation in the STEM workforce to ambiguous language about geography and competitiveness in STEM(2). This diverges from previous efforts to sustain and strengthen our national “economic and intelligence preeminence” through equity-focused STEM education, such as a 2001 report from the U.S.-based Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development titled “Land of Plenty: Diversity as America’s Competitive Edge In Science, Engineering, And Technology”. 
  • Other international institutions, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), also argue that the equitable and thoughtful inclusion of diverse voices in the STEM workforce is an essential element of innovative, competitive, and democratic societies in the 21st century. 
  • Therefore, in order to remain accountable to our students and other interest-holders, and to learn how to best improve EMCC’s contribution to the STEM workforce pipeline, it is vital that we implement measures to increase our knowledge of diverse STEM students’ experiences and identities and how this shapes their educational interests and goals. These insights can help us to design and implement more effective co-curricular programs - such as the STEM Center of Excellence and URE programs - that support STEM students outside of classroom hours and ultimately promote their retention, persistence, and success in STEM. 

 

(1) NASEM (2011). Expanding underrepresented minority participation: America’s science and technology talent at the crossroads: National Academies Press Washington, DC.Foundation NS.; The State of U.S. Science and Engineering (2022): S&E Higher Education in the United States. National Science Foundation; Riegle-Crumb, C., King, B., Irizarry, Y. (2019). Does STEM stand out? Examining racial/ethnic gaps in persistence across postsecondary fields. Educational Researcher, 48(3):133–44.; McGee E.O. (2020). Interrogating structural racism in STEM higher education. Educational Researcher, 49(9):633–44.

(2) “If we want a nation where our future leaders, neighbors, and workers can understand and solve some of the complex challenges of today and tomorrow, and to meet the demands of the dynamic and evolving workforce, building students' skills, content knowledge, and literacy in STEM fields is essential. We must also make sure that, no matter where children live, they have access to quality learning environments. A child's zip code should not determine their STEM literacy and educational options.” (YOU Belong in STEM | U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). Retrieved June 3, 2025, from http://www.ed.gov/about/initiatives/you-belong-stem). 

Describe how the practice will be implemented

This process was conducted in several stages that could be adapted or replicated for others to use in their specific contexts:

 

Step One: Generate/Design the Survey

  1. To begin, I used Google Scholar and Academic Search Complete (accessed through EMCC’s online library portal) to review existing surveys about STEM student identity, sense of belonging, and factors shaping persistence and retention in STEM disciplines. I identified six surveys to adapt and refine that are used in adult/postsecondary STEM education: 
    1. STEM Professional Identity Overlap 
      1. McDonald, M. M., Zeigler-Hill, V., Vrabel, J. K., & Escobar, M. (2019). A Single-Item Measure for Assessing STEM Identity. Frontiers in Education, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2019.00078. 
    2. Science Identity Scale 
      1. Lockhart, M. E., Kwok, O.-M., Yoon, M., & Wong, R. (2022). An important component to investigating STEM persistence: The development and validation of the science identity (SciID) scale. International Journal of STEM Education, 9(1), 34. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-022-00351-1. 
    3. National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Questionnaire
      1. Survey Instruments. (n.d.). Evidence-Based Improvement in Higher Education. Retrieved June 3, 2025, from https://nsse.indiana.edu/nsse/survey-instruments/index.html. 
    4. “Culturally Sustaining STEM Learning Experiences Scale”
      1. Cardiel, C. (2021). A Multiplicity of Journeys: STEM Education Ecosystems as Sources of Cultural Sustenance. Dissertations and Theses. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.7630. 
    5. Cultural Diversity Awareness related to Race/Ethnicity (CDA–R/E) Scale 
      1. Byars-Winston, A., & Butz, A. R. (2021). Measuring Research Mentors’ Cultural Diversity Awareness for Race/Ethnicity in STEM: Validity Evidence for a New Scale. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 20(2), ar15. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.19-06-0127. 
    6. Three open-ended questions about STEM Professional Identity from a qualitative study of STEM Professional Identity
      1. Tripp, J. N., & Liu, X. (2024). Towards Defining STEM Professional Identity: A Qualitative Survey Study. Journal for STEM Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41979-024-00131-2. 
  2. I refined, adapted, removed, and combined questions through discussion with Sharon Stefan, Faculty Director of the STEM Center of Excellence, to result in a pilot survey with approximately 35 items (questions). While it may sound long, the survey only took 8 to 10 minutes for five student workers in a pilot group, who gave me valuable feedback about rewording or combining questions. The finalized questions proved to be detailed enough to reveal interesting patterns in how students viewed themselves in relation to STEM. 
  3. I transferred the questions into Google Forms, which is typically seen as more user-friendly than other survey platforms such as Qualtrics. This is when five students piloted the survey and gave me feedback.
  4. After reflecting and making modifications based on user suggestions, I deployed the survey. The survey was advertised on the STEM Center’s Canvas page and a flyer placed around campus, focusing on the Montezuma building and the STEM Center of Excellence. The survey was active from November 2024 to February 2025, and it received a total of 57 responses. (Future surveys should aim for more participants and less survey items to be closer to achieving statistically significant results.) 
  5. I exported the data to a Google Sheet where I could conduct descriptive statistical analysis and qualitative analysis of students’ responses. I also made data visualizations to help interpret the data, which are not included here. 

 

Step Two: Analyze Results

  1. I used built-in functions in Google Sheets (very similar to MS Excel) to conduct descriptive statistical analyses of different variables, such as the mean, mode, frequency, and standard deviation. 
  2. I also conducted correlation analysis tests between two variables. This type of statistical test assesses the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables. It doesn't imply causation, but rather identifies if the variables tend to move together. The variables I looked at included:
    1. Number of Days Visited STEM Center
    2. Students’ majors
    3. Students’ self-reported racial-ethnic identities
    4. “I have talked with a STEM Professional about a STEM Career”.
    5. “I view myself as a science person”.
    6. “I am involved in an extracurricular science activity”. 

To conduct this kind of analysis, I changed students’ Likert-scale responses (“Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree” or “Very Often” to “Never”) into numerical scores (1-4 or 1-5) using a Google Sheets function. Several limitations, such as the small sample size, make it difficult to draw causal conclusions from this data. However, these results can be very useful for understanding the broader context of how this group of STEM students views themselves in relation to their majors/career pathways. 

Interpret, compare, and describe the results
  • 57 students responded to the survey, from a range of identity backgrounds:
    • 31 men, 20 women, 4 non-binary, 2 preferred not to respond
    • 23 Hispanic (40%), 5 Black (9%), 13 White (23%), 7 Asian (12%), 6 bi/multi-racial (11%)
    • 45 STEM majors, 11 nursing majors, 1 theater/arts major
    • Self-reported GPAs ranged from 1.8 to 4.0
      • Mostly aligned with EMCC’s general demographics
      • Student interests and identity are important considerations for engaging the diverse students at EMCC.
  • Note: Because I work as the Program Analyst/Coordinator for the STEM Center of Excellence, I tried to remain conscious of my role, values toward science/STEM, and interests in the program as I designed the survey and interpreted results. It is important to always consider how our values, biases, and lived experiences shape the activities associated with research, evaluation, and program design, including the design and use of a survey as described here.  

 

Theme 1: Engagement with STEM Center of Excellence

  • Historical data of student engagement with the STEM Center (beyond simply visiting or “being checked in”) has not been gathered or maintained, making it difficult to know exactly how ‘busy’ the STEM Center typically is at different times of the year, and with what kinds of activities. We do know that the Fall semester is typically busier than Spring semester, and students may only visit the STEM Center for semesters in which they are taking STEM courses; these insights align with our data from the 2024-25 academic year:
    • In Fall 2024, we had 1,182 total visits with 357 unique student MEIDs.
    • In Spring 2025, that number dropped to 632 total visits and 232 MEIDs. 
  • On average, student survey responses reported visiting the STEM Center 0-1 times a day (the mean score was 0.696). This indicates that this is a good group to learn from about the ways to increase visibility by advertising the Center to reach more students. Several students’ qualitative responses indicated they may not yet be taking STEM courses, and others identified a lack of awareness as a driving reason for having not visited the STEM Center. 
  • Data highlights that there is still lots of room for improvement to engage more EMCC students: 
    • Based on MCCCD Field of Interest Enrollment data, 1,202 students were enrolled in STEM FOI in 2024-25. 
    • Based on MCCCD Program Declaration data, there are 1,659 students with declared majors in A.S. science disciplines, and 546 in A.A.-based STEM fields such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, and community health. That makes a total of ~2,195 students to target for the STEM Center’s activities. 
    • A total of 537 unique MEIDs checked in to the STEM Center in 2024-25 AY, suggesting we may have reached approximately 25-45% of the total STEM student body at EMCC this year, depending on inclusion criteria. 
  • Students who visit the STEM Center more often are slightly more likely to engage in positive behaviors or hold positive attitudes associated with success in STEM:
    • This includes talking with a STEM professional about a STEM career, which could include faculty and/or STEM professionals that the STEM Center brings in to give talks with students, such as engineers, marine biologists, and medical professionals. While the correlation is minor, it could suggest that students who visit the STEM Center are more likely to have attended a speaker event and engaged in this key aspect of career development than students who do not visit the STEM Center. 
    • However, a much smaller number of students are frequent STEM Center visitors than non-visitors, making it hard to draw a neat conclusion from this data. Improved data collection is needed to shed more light on this conclusion and many others. 

 

 

Theme 2: Do STEM Students View Themselves as “Science People”?

  • It’s important to keep in mind that only 57 students responded to the survey out of over 1,000 total STEM students at EMCC, making it impossible to generalize these results to the entire student population. Even narrowing it to only STEM FOI, this group would comprise ~5.5% of STEM students. However, they offer a glimpse into the minds of several STEM students who were present enough on campus to locate the survey and complete it. For now, I believe these responses justify designing future surveys (and implementing other data collection methods) to reach more STEM students and to guide program planning. 

 

  • 45 students (80%) agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I View Myself as a Science Person”. 10 selected “neutral”, including STEM-declared students and nurses. 
    • Mean score was 4.125, meaning that students on average “Agreed” that they view themselves as a Science Person. Research suggests that this item is a reliable indicator of a student’s sense of connection to STEM and development of a positive and sustainable STEM identity, even if not in a conventional STEM field. 

 

However, while the students themselves may have high degrees of motivation to study STEM topics, they may also need external support in demonstrating the value of their STEM education to family and community members:

  • 17 students (30.4%) have never asked someone else their thoughts about them pursuing a STEM career. 
  • 14 students (25%) say others in their life do not expect them to pursue a career in science.
    • These conclusions suggest that there are opportunities to bring students, STEM faculty, and families together to better explain the value of students’ educational pathway in a culturally relevant way. At the STEM Center, we coordinated an Undergraduate Research Celebration in April 2025 with over 80 attendees, including family members who were able to witness their children’s growth as they participated in the program. 

 

In addition to their family and community members, students who took the survey have had less interaction with STEM faculty, which is a key element of student engagement and a contributor to student success:

  • 15 students (27%) never talked about career plans with faculty, indicating the need for more structured opportunities for engagement relating to career development in STEM.
  • 30 students (53%) never worked with faculty members outside of coursework, indicating the need for the STEM Center to function as a collaborative space for students and faculty to work together. Faculty holding office hours in the STEM Center have (unfortunately) significantly decreased over the previous academic year. 
    • The STEM Center also hosts the Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) program which brings students and faculty together, though there is very minimal awareness of this program among survey-takers. Data focusing on the URE program will be the focus of a separate CATS. 
  • 32 students (57%) say they are not involved in any extracurricular science activity, which can be detrimental to their academic achievement and may negatively impact their transfer applications or likelihood of participating in competitive research labs or STEM jobs/internships after transferring. 
    • Attending the STEM Center more often has a (weak) positive correlation with being more likely to be involved in a STEM extracurricular activity, such as research, internships, Animal Ambassadors, volunteering (with GirlsWhoCode, GirlsGotIT, TechnoloChicas), and more.
      • Correlation between both variables was 0.3377, suggesting that they are somewhat related, but not strongly. In other words, changes in one variable are only loosely associated with changes in the other. That conclusion also provides a justification for deeper investigation, perhaps through student interviews or focus groups to gather more detailed data. 

 

  • 49/56 (87.5%) agree/strongly agree to “use some form of science in career” - they are motivated to be science professionals despite the other challenges they may face. 
  • 47/55 (85%) enjoy learning current events about science, while 8 chose ‘Neutral’ - no respondents disagreed with this statement, implying the relevance of connecting science with current events and cultural holidays (a common theme of STEM Center programming for years). ‘Neutral’ responses may also be due to students not experiencing or being exposed to this kind of science instruction. 

 

Theme 3: Multiple Hats Worn at STEM Center

  • Even though student respondents do not typically visit the STEM Center, open-ended responses suggest that many are aware of its existence/presence and they are familiar to varying degrees with its mission. 
  • Students viewed the STEM Center of Excellence as a space that wears many hats: they suggest the STEM Center is a place for students to receive Academic Support, access STEM resources outside of class, find STEM experiential learning opportunities, and to Collaborate and Network with peers in a safe and inclusive environment. Open-ended responses include:
    • "A place to help with school regarding STEM classes and provide support and resources."
    • "Help students from STEM-related majors."
    • "To help with homework, studying, and career-related questions."
    • "A place to connect with students from your FOI (Field of Interest) and other STEM FOIs."
    • "A place to meet others who also love STEM."
    • "A place where you can get your work done without distractions."
    • "A safe, inclusive environment to connect with students."
    • "Helps people feel comfortable asking questions without fear."
    • "Helps with understanding science and preparing for a bigger future."

 

  • These roles are seen as separate from the STEM Center’s involvement in promoting and coordinating Undergraduate Research and conducting external outreach with local K-12 schools, activities which were largely off of the students’ radars. 
    • Only 4/57 students had participated in undergraduate research, despite that program’s growing presence on EMCC campus
      • 33 “did not know about this program”, 12 “do not think I have enough time to participate”, and others had not ascribed their lack of participation to factors like not being accepted by faculty, not knowing enough English, or not having high enough grades to participate. Importantly, none of these factors are requirements for participation, other than being paired with a faculty mentor, which limits the availability of projects to a few students. 
    • This conclusion justifies ongoing activities to promote visibility and clarity around STEM Center’s services, including UREs, peer mentoring, and more. 
After analyzing, and reflecting on the outcome, what are the next steps?
  1. Reflecting on these outcomes and conclusions, our next step at the STEM Center is to design programming that will more effectively meet students’ needs and support them through experiential and service learning opportunities. This includes focusing on peer mentoring, STEM career exploration and development, and community outreach. 
  • Academic Support: In discussion with several staff, STEM faculty, and administrators, we have shifted away from a 1:1 tutoring model, and we now refer students to the Science and Academic Success Centers in Estrella Hall for explicit academic support. Instead, we train STEM Ambassadors to coordinate and lead workshops around writing STEM journals and lab reports, exam study tips, and key concepts in mathematical reasoning. They also host study groups for students before/after STEM classes to learn together and support students in finding STEM-related extracurricular activities to enrich their learning. 
  • Visibility: In order to make the STEM Center more visible, we have participated more actively in Market Days and other campus events, as well as created flyers and posters to place around campus that educate students about the services we offer. We have also visited popular STEM gateway classes (ex: BIO 181, ECE 102, MAT 220) to promote the STEM Center’s services and answer questions from students. We plan to expand these class visits and activities in the 2025-26 academic year to make the STEM Center more visible in the EMCC community.  
  • Undergraduate Research & Experiential Learning: We will continue partnering with faculty across EMCC campus to develop more undergraduate research projects that will engage a wider range of students, expanding beyond STEM disciplines, to promote experiential learning as a meaningful and high-impact learning practice that supports student success in all areas. 
  1. Informed by the student engagement data, another conclusion from this assessment is to expand efforts to increase STEM student engagement with the STEM Center’s resources, activities, and workshops. One goal of the STEM Center could be to increase our impact from 537 students to 1,000 individual STEM students, as identified by checking in unique MEIDs at the STEM CoE or other events. This would be a significant increase in the number of students engaged by our programming. 
  2. Another next step is to partner with other campus departments, such as OPIE, to develop and promote the use of more effective methods of holistically evaluating educational programs’ effectiveness and impact on students and faculty. Quantitative methods such as student achievement and retention rates are valuable sources of knowledge about a program, and we should continue collecting these sources of data to develop an online dashboard about STEM students at EMCC. However, this survey included other elements of students’ STEM experiences, and the larger mixed-methods evaluation combined this survey with qualitative methods such as interviews and document analysis to explore the STEM Center’s history and current implementation from multiple perspectives. The data reported here is derived from a student survey that had both quantitative (Likert-scale) and qualitative (open-ended) questions. This allows respondents to provide answers that are more nuanced or not adequately addressed in the survey’s quantitative items. The STEM Center should continue collaborating with others to develop a reliable STEM student survey that can be deployed each semester to build a sustainable body of data about STEM students for continuous program improvement. These insights around students’ goals, identities, and career pathway navigation could also be useful for professional development for STEM faculty around experiential learning and student motivation. 
Abstract

This CATS reports from a STEM student engagement survey designed and deployed by the STEM Center of Excellence to understand connections between students’ beliefs about STEM education and their engagement with STEM Center programming. A sample of 57 students from a wide range of disciplines and identity backgrounds participated in the survey. Conclusions suggest that the STEM Center needs to have a clearer focus on holistic student wellbeing, shifting toward peer mentoring, experiential learning, and connecting students with STEM resources rather than STEM-focused academic tutoring, advising, K-12 outreach, and other activities. Additionally, the STEM Center and URE program can both be enriched through further data collection to (1) evaluate the programs’ design, implementation, and outcomes, and (2) guide applied research that will identify innovative practices to promote program success. 

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Yes
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