Columbus State Community College STEM Scholarship Program

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Columbus State Community College in Ohio, in collaboration with high school and university partners, will address the national, regional, and local need for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers. The project will create a scholarship program that is designed to recruit economically disadvantaged students with high academic potential into Associate of Science transfer STEM programs and provide financial support and student support services to ensure student success and completion. The educational supports will result in well-qualified STEM graduates who can transfer to a university, earn a baccalaureate degree, and fill industry needs. The project will deliver a high quality curriculum and an extensive evaluation of project activities. It has an aggressive plan to ensure full participation for underrepresented women and minority students. The project will create new research data on which activities have the greatest impacts on student success. With such information, future STEM projects will build on this discovery to improve services. An extensive evaluation plan will yield unbiased data on which components of the project are most successful. The lessons learned and project outcomes will be disseminated broadly to enable other colleges to craft projects to engage low-income aspiring STEM students. The project is led by STEM faculty members with years of experience who have developed a well-reasoned set of activities based on student success literature. The college has extensive resources to enable a successful project including a new STEM Resource Center, which will be a major focal point for student engagement. The overall project goals are to (a) increase the recruitment, retention, student success, transfer and graduation of low-income, academically talented students with demonstrated financial need pursuing an Associate of Science degree in STEM disciplines; (b) implement and study a STEM scholarship program, that includes STEM advising and enhanced curriculum, evaluating effective best practices to better understand the factors of supportive curricular and co-curricular activities that affect recruitment, retention, student success, academic/career pathways, and/or degree attainment (including student transfer); and (c) sustain effective curricular and co-curricular activities for low-income academically talented students with financial need, pursuing STEM education at the college. During the five-year project 48 students will participate as S-STEM scholars. The project will involve (a) activities for all S-STEM Scholars that include an annual scholarship, weeklong summer bridge program for incoming freshmen, STEM Club, dedicated STEM advisor, STEM Resource Center, career counseling, internship opportunities, cohort class scheduling, early alerts, and peer mentoring; and (b) optional activities available to S-STEM Scholars including intervention-based tutoring, supplemental instruction, student support services available through other college programs, a first-year STEM seminar series, and STEM-focused service learning opportunities.