The project is awarding scholarships to academically talented students with financial need majoring in Engineering, Engineering Technology, Mathematics, Physics, or Computer Science. Program objectives include (1) employ recruitment efforts to expand the number of STEM students earning a bachelor's degree; (2) promote sustained, high quality faculty/student relationships between scholarship recipients and their faculty mentors; (3) increase these students' awareness of the academic support, career planning, and educational enhancement opportunities available to them and encourage them to utilize these resources and opportunities; (4) increase these students' awareness of and interaction with high technology industries and graduate education opportunities.
Recruitment efforts focus on high school, community college, and two-year college students in the five state region with an interest or aptitude in the STEM fields. Program components include extensive faculty mentoring and advising, contact with members of industry, educational enhancement activities, peer mentoring, and meetings of the scholarship recipients.
Intellectual Merit: The project is guided by current literature on student success as well as prior success with S-STEM projects that enable SDSU to continue and improve upon a successful scholarship program.
Broader Impact: The project provides an educational model that links existing student support systems and classroom learning with structured, out-of-the class experiences. Detailed strategies with frequent contact and monitoring of students early and throughout their college careers allow for greater retention of STEM students, which directly translates to impact on students and enables them to graduate with degrees in STEM fields.
