Influence of S-STEM Funding: Challenges and Successes

This article presents a summary of the four years of activities of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) that includes descriptions of one hour course used, expectations required from scholarship recipients (scholars) and their responses to a survey. The S-STEM program at our institution provided scholarships for financially eligible students in Biochemistry (BIOCH), Biology(BIOL), Chemistry (CHEM), Computer Information System (CIS), Computer Science (CS), Electronics Engineering Technology (EET), and Mathematics (MATH) for the past four academic years (Fall-2009 through Spring–2013). Principal investigators (PIs) activities included proactive recruitment and advertising; offering a one-credit course every fall semester that provided students with skills in job interviewing; teamwork; learning about the future job market and some business skills, plus active mentoring and tutoring. As shown in Table 1, a total of 115 scholarships were given to for the duration of the award. Some students received scholarships for multiple years. The main goal of the S-STEM project was to enable academically talented students, with financial need as defined by the federal government, to either enter a STEM discipline (in order to complete their bachelor degree and then enter the workforce) or to pursue a graduate degree. The Table 1 below provides information on the number of scholarships given and the demographic of scholars. Discipline # of Scholarships Male Female White Hispanic African American Native American EET 15 14 1 11 3 1 0 CS 12 8 4 9 3 0 9 CIS 10 7 3 7 0 3 0 BIO-CHEM 4 0 4 4 CHEM 12 4 8 7 3 0 2 GEOL 1 1 0 1 MATH 8 3 5 4 3 1 0 BIOL 33 13 20 20 12 1 0 Associate 20 9 11 12 7 1 0 Total 115 59 56 75 31 7 2 Table 1. The total number of S-STEM Scholarships awarded as a function of demographics for 2009-10 to 2012-13 academic years. Our institution is a Hispanic serving intuition (31.29% of our students are Hispanic). According to the US Code – Section 1067: Congressional Findings, ―As the Nation‘s population becomes more diverse, it is important that the educational and training needs of all Americans are met; underrepresentation of minorities in science and technological fields diminishes our Nation‘s competitiveness by impairing the quantity of well prepared scientists, engineers, and technical experts in these fields.‖ 1 The S-STEM scholarship was beneficial to many students for the following reasons: encouraging students to do well academically, constant mentoring, meetings and reminding recipients that lack of high performance would lead to loss of scholarship, teamwork and interacting with peers. Also, time management as well as reducing the number of hours working for income was a big factor in achieving high GPAs. The lack of Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) on file for some applicants was a difficult and time consuming process. This article presents detailed information on challenges and successes of the award.