Scholarships for Upward Mobility

该项目是一项共同努力，旨在帮助有才华的经济困难学生完成工程、科学、信息技术、计算机科学和数学等领域的学位。该项目正在吸引、留住和毕业更多的学生，并正在增加科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)学科中代表性不足的群体的数量。该项目在四年的时间里每年提供24至28个奖学金，以支持有学术天赋和联邦政府界定的经济困难的学生。招聘战略针对的是代表性不足的学生、妇女和残疾学生群体。目前正在开发无缝路径，以确保学生获得这些学科的副学位，并进入劳动力大军或转到大学完成学士学位。这项活动的智力价值之一是，它在STEM中创建了特定学科的队列，培养学生参与学术合作努力的能力，并为提高学生的成功和留存提供点对点支持机制。另一个优点是该项目的基础设施。塔科马社区学院是全国表现最好的社区学院之一，在2005年社区学院学生参与度调查中排名第一，其课程和评估策略是为工程设计课程开发和应用的全国认可的课程和评估策略。此外，学院最近建造了新的科学/工程和信息技术大楼，旨在与最先进的计算机支持系统进行小组互动。这一项目的更广泛影响是，它直接解决了工程师和科学家短缺的核心因素，特别是申请者群体。增加招聘和留住有学术天赋的STEM学生直接提高了这些学科学生的毕业率，并最终增加了合格申请者的人数。该项目的另一个更广泛的影响是社区机构、四年制机构、雇主的参与，并利用共同努力制定战略，解决全球社区问题，以改善STEM学科中代表性不足的少数群体的招聘、留住和毕业情况。这一项目的影响通过学者作为项目大使的作用进一步扩大，成为当地社区选民的榜样。此外，项目领导团队正在创建和促进一次反馈/传播会议，塔科马地区其他以学生为中心的项目(包括CSEMS、S-STEM、Robert Noyce和STEP Awards)的地区首席调查人员在会上讨论最佳实践，确定关注的领域，并制定战略，以改进所有这些赠款的实施。该项目的成果正通过州、区域和国家会议传播。

The project is a concerted effort to enable talented financially-needy students to complete degrees in the areas of engineering, science, information technology, computer science, and mathematics. The project is attracting, retaining, and graduating a greater number of students and is increasing the number of under-represented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. This project provides 24 to 28 scholarships annually over a period of four years to support academically talented and federally defined financial needy students. Recruitment strategies are targeted at under-represented groups of students, women and students with disabilities. Seamless pathways are being developed to ensure students earn an associate degree in these disciplines and gain entry to the workforce or transfer to a university to complete a baccalaureate degree.One of the intellectual merit of this activity is that it is creating discipline-specific cohorts in STEM that are developing students' abilities to engage in scholarly collaborative efforts and providing peer-to-peer support mechanism for increased student success and retention. Another item of merit is the project's infrastructure. Tacoma Community College's is one of the top performing community colleges in the nation as ranked by the 2005 Community College Survey of Student Engagement, based on its nationally recognized curriculum and assessment strategies developed for and applied in engineering design courses. In addition the College recently built new science/engineering and IT buildings deliberately designed to accommodate group interaction with state of the art computer support systems.The broader impact of this project is that it directly addresses a key factor at the heart of the shortage of engineers and scientists, specifically the applicant pool. Increasing the recruitment and retention of academically talented STEM students directly increases the graduation rates of students in these disciplines and ultimately increases the pool of qualified applicants. An additional broader impact of this project is the engagement of community agencies, four year institutions, employers, and a leveraging of combined efforts to develop strategies to solve global community issues to improve recruitment, retention, and graduation of underrepresented minority groups in STEM disciplines. The impact of this project is further broadened through the role the scholars are playing as ambassadors for the program serving as role models to their native community constituencies. Additionally, the project leadership team is creating and facilitating a feedback/dissemination meeting in which regional principal investigators for other student centered programs in the Tacoma region (including CSEMS, S-STEM, Robert Noyce and STEP awards) discuss best practices, identify areas of concern and develop strategies to improve the implementation of all of these grants. Results of the project are being disseminated through state, regional and national conferences.