Building Exceptional Talent in Engineering and Computing in the Utah Valley

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This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Utah Valley University (UVU). Over its 6-year duration, this project will provide scholarships to 36 students who are pursuing degrees in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Software Engineering. The Building Exceptional Talent in Engineering & Computing (BE-TEC) program will advance Utah’s Engineering and Computer Science Initiative, contribute to a high-quality STEM workforce, and strengthen STEM programs at a large, open-admissions university. The project will promote student success and degree completion by providing scholarships to low-income, academically talented students with demonstrated financial need for up to four years, beginning in their freshman year. Scholarship recipients will be supported by evidence-based high impact activities, including intentional faculty mentoring, professional internships, collaborative design projects, leadership opportunities, and senior capstone projects. BE-TEC is enhancing the capability of an open-enrollment university with a markedly different student population from those at research-focused institutions to attract, retain, and graduate students in engineering and computing and prepare them to contribute to their STEM professions. The project aims to ameliorate several institutionally identified attrition points in the STEM educational pipeline, including excessive time to completion, excessive part-time work, a high dropout rate, and low participation and completion rates of women, minorities, and first-generation students. The project will recruit broadly through UVU’s extensive, state-supported, dual-enrollment programs and its low-income serving summer-bridge programs. Enrolled undergraduates in the "I Am First" and TRIO Student Support Services (SSS – for low-income and first-generation students) programs will also be targets for recruitment. The synergy of planned BE-TEC activities has the potential of facilitating transformative experiences for individual students and of helping prepare a talented workforce with the technical and soft skills to meet regional and national needs. This project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.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.