The Purdue Rising Scholars Experience: Exploring Student Success

Many intelligent low-socioeconomic status high school students correctly view STEM majors as a way out of poverty, but the challenges to ultimate success are plentiful. For those who applied but did not initially gain admittance into an engineering department, the Rising Scholars program at Purdue University offered these undergraduates a pathway through college that brought them into contact with a network of professional mentors, including university professors, staff, and graduate students. Program participants were also provided opportunities to engage in team-building activities and teaching seminars that involved writing research papers focused on postgraduate careers. Although no longer in operation, the program assisted nearly all its participants in earning degrees at Purdue, the vast majority of them graduating in STEM-related disciplines. The peer-reviewed articles compiled in this book represent formative reports produced by program leaders during the Rising Scholars program’s active period on the West Lafayette campus between 2017 and 2024, and are intended to offer guidance to professionals at other institutions about how to nurture low-socioeconomic status students. The Purdue Rising Scholars Experience provides comprehensive coverage of the individuals who participated in the program and the important outcomes learned from this groundbreaking study.