In an ideal world, students would be able to dedicate themselves entirely to their studies, with no distractions or competing priorities dividing their attention. But, if that was ever realistic, it certainly isn’t now. With work and family responsibilities, education just can’t always come first.
For Drs. Alberto Cruz, Amin Malek, Andrea Medina and Melissa Danforth from the School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering at California State University, Bakersfield, the problem isn’t that students have jobs outside of class, but that those jobs are usually unrelated to their academic interests and have supervisors who are inflexible to work around student schedules. Students who must work to help provide for their families are especially affected by these conditions, making it harder for them to graduate on time.
The team hopes to change that with the new MAESTRO program, which recently received a $200,000 grant for two years from the National Science Foundation’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions program. An acronym for “Minority Advancement in Education, Science and Technology by Refactoring the Online program,” MAESTRO will support internships, workshops and experimental class designs that better fit busy schedules.
“Our project was motivated by noting that our timeline to graduation and retention were a little lower, and some of the factors we noticed were that a majority of students in our department are working part-time to full-time jobs,” Dr. Cruz said. “It was a realization that the priorities of modern students are no longer in sync with traditional academics and class policies.”
The professors' department, which covers computer engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, serves students who are generally an underrepresented minority, are from a low-income background and contribute significantly to their home’s household income. Around 62% of students in the department work part-time and 23% work full-time, upward of 30 hours a week. While earning their degree, they often work food service or retail jobs, with schedules that might force them to choose between missing a class or a day’s pay.
“For them, this work is absolutely necessary,” Dr. Cruz said. “They’re in a difficult position, then, where they have to choose between their work and their university life. And if they’re contributing significantly to their household income, they’re under an immense amount of pressure to keep their job. I’m pretty sure that if it came down to it, they would rather keep food on the table than make significant progress toward their degree.”
Through Project MAESTRO, Dr. Cruz and Dr. Malek hope to change that by shifting the idea that school always comes first and by providing an alternative path that will let students work to provide for themselves and their families without sacrificing their education.
The first component of Project MAESTRO is paid internships for students in the department. Three companies are already on board and will begin offering intern positions in the spring: WhiteFox Defense Industries, the California Resource Corporation and Avadine, a local Bakersfield software engineering consulting company. Dr. Cruz said he is expecting Project MAESTRO will fund between 10 and 20 internships.
“The goal of our project is to help underrepresented students obtain career-relevant work with internships,” Dr. Cruz explained. “These other jobs aren’t relevant to their career and significantly take time away from their course of study. If we get them in these internships that are actually synergizing with their major, we expect them to do much better.”
Dr. Malek said this part of Project MAESTRO is all about getting students the kind of hands-on experience that best prepares them for a career after college.
“We want them to just feel the environment, learn how to work as a team to tackle the engineering problems and basically have a good working experience that is good for their resume and also for their future,” Dr. Malek said.
Another part of Project MAESTRO is new experimental class designs that blend asynchronous and synchronous classes and have instructors monitoring students’ performance and meeting only as needed. Starting in the spring, this will let the 200 or so students enrolled in these classes prioritize school without sacrificing work hours.
“The traditional idea is that you have a synchronous class where everybody meets at a specific time, but if you have a job where you’re hourly or wage-based, it’s extremely hard to ask your supervisor for time off, so sometimes you just don’t even go or you hope that the instructor recorded it,” Dr. Cruz said. “We’re going to pioneer some new educational strategies that are designed to work around students who have heavy workloads, meeting in small groups with targeted interventions for those who are having trouble.”
Project MAESTRO will also include professional development workshops for both students and faculty in the department. In these, students will learn how to search for jobs, write a resume and prepare for interviews. Faculty workshops will include discussions on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“We hope through all of these things that we can make the university experience much better for everybody,” Dr. Cruz said.
Dr. Cruz and Dr. Malek were inspired to create Project MAESTRO by their own interactions with students on campus. Because of CSUB’s smaller size, both professors are able to get to know their students in a way they wouldn’t at a larger university.
“Working with students at CSUB, you really have to care for our students,” Dr. Cruz said. “They rely on us to give them a quality experience, but then on top of that, there are so many factors that impact their ability to proceed through our program. We have to help them find internships and show them the way. I care a lot about our students, and I want to make sure these things happen for them.”