Connect With 'Science': Opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

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The project provides scholarships to science, technology, or mathematics undergraduate majors during each year of the program. Selected students are eligible for up to eight semesters of scholarship support. Recruitment efforts are coordinated with the College's Admissions Office, and specific activities in the surrounding region promote this opportunity. The project targets area public high schools that emphasize math and science college preparation courses, including schools with significant underrepresented student populations. Once recruited into the program, scholarship recipients take advantage of student support services designed to increase student success. The intellectual merit of this work lies in research that documents the ties among student cohort engagement, retention, mentoring, and S-STEM project elements. This program takes advantage of ongoing programs and resources already in place at the College and directly complements an ongoing NSF-STEP project, currently early in its second year. These include: a STEM-themed year-long learning community; student-led study sessions for all introductory gateway courses; cohort sections of the intellectual foundations course required by all entering students; dedicated sections of First-Year Seminars; an early undergraduate research program for STEM majors; and other research programs available through the Office of Undergraduate Research. Additional activities for the S-STEM project include activities coordinated by the College's Career Development Center. Students receiving S-STEM scholarships attend a monthly seminar series focusing on career development, employment information (including trips to visit local facilities), and information about graduate programs. The broader impact of this work lies in the potential for the scholarships to recruit, educate, and mentor academically talented, financially needy students to earn science, technology, and math degrees and enter the STEM workforce or continue their education at the graduate level.