Using Evidence-Based Practices to Help Students Succeed Against the Odds

In West Vir­ginia, a men­tor­ing pro­gram sup­port­ed by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion is lever­ag­ing evi­dence-based prac­tices to help high school stu­dents from under­served com­mu­ni­ties earn an advanced degree in a STEM-based field.

The pro­gram — called the Health Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy Acad­e­my (HSTA) — has served approx­i­mate­ly 2,500 West Vir­gini­ans. Most of these par­tic­i­pants have been first-gen­er­a­tion col­lege stu­dents. One-third are African-Amer­i­can stu­dents and rough­ly half have come from finan­cial­ly dis­ad­van­taged households.

HSTA is com­mit­ted to col­lect­ing and ana­lyz­ing evi­dence to mea­sure its effec­tive­ness and help young peo­ple in West Vir­ginia and beyond. The pro­gram oper­ates under the premise that some of its par­tic­i­pants will grad­u­ate and then return home to put their much-need­ed exper­tise in health care or STEM edu­ca­tion to good use. It’s not a far-fetched bet: Near­ly 90% of HSTA stu­dents earn at least a four-year degree and 84% stay in West Vir­ginia to work.

The HSTA mod­el has been so effec­tive at sup­port­ing stu­dent suc­cess that experts recent­ly explored expand­ing its scope of influ­ence. At West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­si­ty, 25 HSTA col­lege stu­dents admin­is­tered a Face­book-dri­ven cur­ricu­lum on healthy liv­ing to HSTA high-school stu­dents. In this role, the col­lege stu­dents act­ed as near-peer men­tors — and inspired their younger coun­ter­parts to eat health­i­er, lose weight and exer­cise, accord­ing to Social Media Based STEM Enrich­ment Cur­ricu­lum Pos­i­tive­ly Impacts Rur­al Ado­les­cent Health Mea­sures, a report recent­ly pub­lished in the Jour­nal of STEM Outreach.

With the Casey Foundation’s sup­port, HSTA has col­lab­o­rat­ed with the West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­si­ty School of Pub­lic Health to col­lect qual­i­ta­tive data from the program’s gov­ern­ing board as well as lon­gi­tu­di­nal data from three groups — cur­rent pro­gram par­tic­i­pants, a com­par­i­son group of non-par­tic­i­pat­ing peers, and pro­gram alum­ni. HSTA intends to use this infor­ma­tion to enhance its strengths and refine its pur­suit of long-term goals.

Casey has also sup­port­ed efforts to expand HSTA beyond West Vir­ginia, accord­ing to Ilene Berman, a senior asso­ciate with the Foundation’s Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group. This work involves gath­er­ing evi­dence and ana­lyz­ing mate­ri­als and strate­gies to bet­ter under­stand the program’s key com­po­nents. With this infor­ma­tion on record, HSTA ​“hopes to serve as a mod­el for oth­ers who are inter­est­ed in empow­er­ing young peo­ple from under­rep­re­sent­ed groups to suc­ceed in post­sec­ondary edu­ca­tion,” says Berman.

Check out the Foun­da­tion’s video series on help­ing orga­ni­za­tions build evi­dence in five steps