HSCC KickStarter: Providing Hispanic-Serving Community Colleges with Technical Assistance to Improve their Federal Funding Competitiveness

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The HSCC KickStarter project will provide Hispanic-Serving Community Colleges (HSCCs) with technical assistance to improve their readiness and competitiveness for federal grant programs in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. HSCCs have large enrollments of Hispanic and low-income students and are therefore important partners for increasing the participation of diverse individuals in STEM education programs and careers. Many HSCCs have not been successful in securing federal grant projects, which is often attributed to the lack of infrastructure at HSCCs to develop and implement large federal grants. This project will increase the numbers of HSCCs that successfully pursue federal grants, particularly from the National Science Foundation, ultimately increasing recruitment and retention in STEM through enhancements to these institutions' STEM curricula, strengthening ties to industry and community partners, and developing robust articulation pathways to four-year STEM programs. The KickStarter project will provide intensive technical assistance to 10-15 HSCCs. In addition, all community colleges in the country will have an opportunity to benefit from access to the tools, materials, and lessons learned through KickStarter webinars and conference presentations.The KickStarter team will implement an innovative and comprehensive technical assistance model designed to address the issues associated with the HSCCs' low level of success in submitting and securing federal STEM grant proposals. According to the proposers, the issues most often cited in reviews of declined federal proposals include the lack of readiness to conceive, justify, and execute complicated projects. The KickStarter technical assistance model will address these issues by developing a "Readiness Framework" in collaboration with the HSCCs. The framework will be based on institutional self-evaluation of student support services, industry engagement, and technology and curricular alignment. This framework will guide the development of STEM proposals that demonstrate capacity for project implementation and align with the institutional mission and STEM education goals of the HSCC. The KickStarter team has expertise in building community college partnerships with industry and community organizations, and deep knowledge of and experience with federal grant programs and grant management. This project has the potential to become a technical assistance model for other minority-serving community colleges, such as two-year Historically Black Colleges and Tribal Colleges.