Louis Stokes B2B Alliance: C6: California Central Coast Community College Collaborative

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The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce through their efforts to significantly increase the numbers of students from historically underrepresented minority populations to successfully complete high-quality degree programs in STEM. The California Central Coast Community College Collaborative (C6) LSAMP Bridge to the Baccalaureate (B2B) is an innovative, cross-disciplinary, and multi-institutional collaboration developed by STEM programs and leaders from eight community colleges, Allan Hancock College (AHC), Cabrillo College, Cuesta College, Monterey Peninsula College (MPC), Moorpark College, Oxnard College, Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) and Ventura College. The C6 Alliance will launch a model for how community college STEM programs can collaborate and leverage existing support structures and best practices across the member institutions to address inequities in STEM outcomes for a population of students who are too often ignored: first-generation Hispanic/Latinx and other URMs in rural areas. The C6 Alliance will serve as a model to other California community colleges on collaborations to increase STEM transfers in the fastest growing demographic – Hispanic/Latinx students. The specific goals of the project are (1) Narrow the Hispanic success rate gap in STEM gateway courses; (2) Increase the number of Hispanic STEM students transferring to universities (3) Hold Fall Research Symposia to celebrate CC student research and project experiences; and (4) Increase student awareness of their academic path and their sense of belonging in STEM. In addition, the C6 Alliance's industry partnerships are designed to increase industry awareness of community college URM student populations' diverse and untapped potential. This will greatly benefit industry partners and students in the long term and will add to the reach and sustainability of the project and similar collaborations beyond the grant period. Results and lessons learned will be disseminated via an alliance website, presentations at national conferences, and to other community colleges and potential collaboratives within the region and state.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.