LSAMP Bridge to the Baccalaureate: North Carolina STEM Alliance (NCSA)

Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte NC

Investigators

Abstract

The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the STEM workforce through their efforts at significantly increasing the numbers of students from historically underrepresented minority populations to successfully complete high quality degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The LSAMP Bridge to the Baccalaureate (B2B) funding opportunity provides support for historically underrepresented minority STEM students who begin their instruction at a community college with the intent to transfer into 4-year STEM degree programs in addition to other infrastructure support such as STEM faculty professional development. The North Carolina STEM Alliance (NCSA), under the leadership of Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC), is a community college alliance consisting of CPCC, Davidson County Community College (DCCC) and Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC). The alliance will implement a variety of activities that could potentially increase the participation of underrepresented minorities and veterans in STEM disciplines and ensure that all populations have the opportunity to succeed in STEM careers thereby increase the nation's competitiveness. The goals of the project are to increase the number of underrepresented minority (URM) students who transfer to university STEM programs. The NCSA will reach this goal through targeted engagement, career exploration, and dual enrollment. Activities that will be implemented to mitigate barriers for community college students, particularly URMs, include: contextualized curriculum, targeted academic support, coaching and proactive advising, research and career experiences, professional development, K-16 curriculum alignment and faculty professional development. Presentations and scholarly publications produced by the project will be shared with national community college and other workforce stakeholder organizations.