The STEM Scholarship Program

Itasca Community College, Grand Rapids MN

Investigators

Abstract

This project is (1) awarding 160 scholarships over four years, (2) leveraging NSF money to raise additional scholarship funding, (3) developing scholar teams to undertake service learning projects, (4) enhancing student professionalism through workshops, (5) mentoring the scholarship cohort, (6) maintaining retention to degree achievement, (7) preventing students from having to stop-out, (8) providing students with increased career exposure, (9) offering students an improved design experience, (10) improving academic assistance programs, (11) increasing STEM enrollment, and (12) focusing on recruiting more students from underrepresented groups. Intellectual Merit: The college has a comprehensive and successful engineering program. Students spend two years completing calculus, physics, chemistry, statics, dynamics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, circuits, and other courses. After graduation, students transfer to a university to complete their degree. Since 1992, 75% of the students who started physics graduated from a university with a STEM degree. There has been consistent enrollment growth from 10 students to 196 students over the past 15 years. Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering Technology majors are included in this community of learners and are eligible for scholarships. This project is informed by research and demonstrates the impact of Learning Communities and effective recruiting strategies. Broader Impact: The impact of the recruiting and retention projects on a program's ability to attract new STEM students and enable them to persist to degree completion has the potential to be widely adapted. The experience with first generation college students (82% of college population) show they excel with the strategies shown by research to benefit students in underrepresented groups. This project expands recruiting into a metro area with large populations of Hispanic, Somali, and Hmong people. It enhances infrastructure of education at the college by enabling talented students without financial resources to attend. Significant numbers of young people (who would not have otherwise) are becoming STEM educated professionals, empowered to impact society.