A number of studies have focused on the identification of factors impacting minority students’ persistence at four-year colleges and universities. Most of these studies focus on what the students or institutions have done wrong, with fewer studies focusing on the specific factors that successful students, those who have persisted to graduation, have done right to overcome barriers to graduation.

The main objectives of the study are to: (a) identify resources utilized by minority students leading to academic success as identified by general and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) discipline retention experts; (b) identify the knowledge acquired to access available resources and actions employed to utilize resources by minority students studying in STEM disciplines; (c) analyze the associations between resources utilized by graduates of the Hewlett Packard (HP) Scholars Program and the academic majors selected; and (d) analyze the associations between resources utilized by HP Scholars and the institutions attended. This study utilized the Padilla Expertise Model of Student Success (1991), with slight modifications, as the theoretical framework.

It is hoped that further research using this framework as a foundation will result in an instrument that is reflective of the needs of minority students studying STEM field disciplines to persist to graduation and will also equip institutions of higher education with the tools to facilitate this success.