Growing the Community College Pipeline for Careers in Civil, Chemical, and Ocean Engineering through the FITS-STEM Program

佛罗里达理工学院（FIT）通过S-STEM项目支持26名有学术天赋、经济需要的化学、土木和海洋工程专业的转学生。来自不提供工程学位的社区学院和四年制州立大学的三组转学生通过奖学金、早期指导和其他学术和职业支持活动得到支持。FIT利用与五所学院（东佛罗里达州立学院-前布里沃德社区学院，印度河州立学院，代托纳州立学院，希尔斯堡社区学院和迈阿密戴德学院）的合作伙伴关系，为学生提供转学到FIT并攻读工程学位的机会，以满足佛罗里达州的劳动力需求。项目成果包括增加来自低收入群体的转学生进入STEM领域的数量，改善代表性不足的少数民族学生获得STEM学位的机会，帮助合作学校招收更多STEM领域的学生，以及传播项目的经验教训和评估结果。FIT正在实施一套全面的循证实践，以支持其转学生的成功转校、留校和毕业。该项目包括合作院校的重点招聘计划。学生在社区和州立大学期间提供的早期指导和过渡支持旨在使过渡过程顺利进行。FIT与合作社区学院和四年制大学之间建立的衔接协议也被利用。在FIT注册期间，学生参加多种队列建设和专业发展活动，包括与学生工程专业组织的实践活动，与可持续发展相关的设计和研究研讨会，也有机会参加地区和国家学生竞赛，并使用强化学术支持中心提供的服务。此外，职业咨询活动帮助学生过渡到工程劳动力。该项目包括一项评估计划，通过混合方法（如调查和访谈）进行形成性和总结性评估，以确定FITS-STEM奖学金计划的改进之处，以及多种指标来跟踪项目成果的成功实现。

The Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) is supporting 26 academically talented transfer students with financial need who are majoring in chemical, civil, and ocean engineering through this S-STEM project. Three cohorts of transfer students from community colleges and four-year state colleges that do not offer engineering degrees are supported through scholarships, early mentoring, and other academic and career support activities. FIT is leveraging partnerships with five colleges (Eastern Florida State College - formerly Brevard Community College, Indian River State College, Daytona State College, Hillsborough Community College, and Miami Dade College) to provide students opportunities to transfer to FIT and pursue engineering degrees to address workforce needs in the state of Florida. The project outcomes include increasing the number of transfer students from low income groups to enter STEM fields, improving opportunities for underrepresented minority students to obtain STEM degrees, helping partner schools recruit more students in STEM fields, and disseminating the lessons learned and evaluation results of the project. FIT is implementing a comprehensive set of evidence-based practices to support the successful transfer, retention, and graduation of its transfer students. The project includes a focused recruitment plan at the partner colleges. The early mentoring and transition support provided while students are at the community and state colleges aims to smooth the transition process. Established articulation agreements between FIT and the partner community colleges and four-year institutions are leveraged as well. While enrolled at FIT, students participate in multiple cohort building and professional development activities, including hands-on activities with student engineering professional organizations, sustainability-related design and research seminars, and also have opportunities to engage in regional and national student competitions and use services provided by the Enhanced Academic Support Center. In addition, career advising activities assist the students' transition into the engineering workforce. The project includes an evaluation plan with both formative and summative evaluation via mixed methods (such as surveys and interviews) to identify improvements to the FITS-STEM scholarship program, as well as multiple metrics to track success in meeting project outcomes.