Aligning Students into Accelerated Pathways in Engineering, Technology, and Building Science

开发方便、灵活和吸引人的STEM教育途径对于满足21世纪劳动力的需求至关重要。STEM学生的人口结构正在转变，包括越来越多的成年学习者，包括退伍军人，他们来到大学时拥有无数的经验和责任，远远超过了最近的高中毕业生。这些成年学生在进入、保留和完成传统的STEM课程方面面临多重障碍，但他们从以前的工作或军事经验中获得了现有的STEM技能。在这个项目中，南西雅图学院，一个两年制的少数民族服务机构，将与成人和体验式学习委员会，华盛顿退伍军人事务部和行业合作，创造一个从艺术副学士学位到可持续建筑科学技术学士学位的无缝过渡。该项目旨在为建筑调校专家这一新兴领域的退伍军人和在职工人建立一条加速劳动力发展的途径。建筑调校是通过对建筑进行分析和调整，提高建筑节能性能的过程。电气、机械和其他系统。该项目将为学生提供真实的现场经验，并将通过将现场工作经验计入，使退伍军人和在职工人现有的stem相关技能与学位要求保持一致。该项目通过以下方式解决了STEM招聘和完成的常见障碍：1)研究、开发和实施STEM副学士学位，通过调整工程/技术/建筑科学方面的现有技能，将STEM副学士学位衔接为学士学位；2)设计和提供STEM领域的经验，让本科生接触到商业建筑的改造和调整；3)建立一个由社区、行业和教育合作伙伴组成的网络，以推进STEM加速学位课程。该项目旨在了解包括现实应用在内的体验式学习项目如何支持学生在STEM领域的坚持和保留。在这个项目中开发的学位加速方法可以应用于多个STEM学科。工业相关课程的毕业生将直接从事设施管理、建筑科学、能源效率和保护方面的工作。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Developing accessible, flexible, and engaging STEM educational pathways is crucial to meeting the needs of the 21st century workforce. The STEM student demographic is shifting to include an increasing number of adult learners, including veterans, who come to college with a myriad of experiences and responsibilities well beyond those of recent high school graduates. Such adult students face multiple barriers to entry, retention, and completion of traditional STEM programs, yet they have existing STEM skills from prior work or military experience. In this project, South Seattle College, a two-year minority serving institution, will work with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, the Washington Department of Veterans Affairs, and industries to create a seamless transition from an Associate of Arts degree to a bachelor's program in Sustainable Building Science Technology. The project aims to establish an accelerated workforce development pathway for veterans and incumbent workers in the emerging field of building tune-up specialists. Building tune up is a process for increasing energy performance of building, by analyzing and adjusting the building?s electrical, mechanical, and other systems. This project will offer students authentic field experiences in building tune-up and will align existing STEM-related skills of veterans and incumbent workers to degree requirements by giving credit for work experiences in the field. This project addresses common barriers to STEM recruitment and completion by 1) researching, developing, and implementing a STEM associate's degree that articulates into bachelor's degrees by aligning existing skills in engineering/technology/building science; 2) designing and offering STEM field experiences that expose undergraduates to retrofitting and tune-ups of commercial buildings; and 3) creating a network of community, industry, and educational partners to advance accelerated STEM degree programs. This project seeks to generate knowledge of how experiential learning projects that include real-life application can support the persistence and retention of students in the STEM fields. The methodology developed in this project for degree acceleration might be applied across multiple STEM disciplines. Graduates of the industry-relevant programs will work directly with facilities management, building science, and energy efficiency and conservation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.