A Holistic Approach to Build Up A Diverse Community of Rising Engineers

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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 Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA). NOVA has a very diverse student body with more than 63% ethnic minority students. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships for 85 unique full-time students who are pursuing associate degrees in engineering. First-year students will receive up to two years of scholarship support. The project intends to increase the number of students from underrepresented groups who transfer to four-year institutions and ultimately join the engineering workforce. This will be achieved through synergistic efforts focused on recruitment, financial and academic support, and community building. Increased participation in STEM fields, particularly among underrepresented groups, is critical to the United States’ continued leadership in science and engineering innovation. This project has the potential to broaden participation in engineering and learn how a holistic approach will support the STEM workforce to meet the national and regional needs. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The goals of this project are supporting students’ financial needs, closing the equity and achievement gap, and providing centralized academic and institutional support. This project team plans to specifically track key outcomes including GPA, participation in internships and experiential learning, and successful degree completion. This work has the potential to serve as a model for making STEM education more accessible for all Americans by recruiting, retaining, and training a demographically diverse engineering workforce that meets the nation’s demand for STEM talents. The project will be evaluated through the collection of quantitative and qualitative data, using historical data as a comparison to track results. Results of this project will be shared through presentations at conferences, submissions to journals, and hosting a regional STEM workshop for engineering faculty and students from nearby colleges. 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 earning degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about the academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and 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.