PIPELINES: Fostering University-Community College Partnerships and STEM Professional Success for Underrepresented Populations

A survey of literature reveals a major problem in retaining engineering college students due to the perceived lack of connections with, and real access to STEM-related careers. This effect appears more pronounced for underrepresented groups, often first generation college students, including veterans. PIPELINES, a collaboration between a Navy Base in Southern California, a tier-1 research university and a network of community colleges, is an early workforce learning experience that fosters students’ career preparedness while providing the ground to investigate the complexities of developing STEM readiness of underrepresented populations through an interactive ethnographic approach. In this work, we highlight strategies we found effective in developing and implementing this multi-tiered, interdisciplinary effort, in which each actor (educators, researchers, and Navy scientists and engineers) brings complementary knowledge and skills that are key to PIPELINES programmatic and recruitment success. Additionally, lessons learned from our first iteration of the PIPELINES program are illustrated using findings from program evaluation (a separate and independent component from the ethnographic research study).