The SUCCESS Scholars Program offers competitive scholarships and academic/career-building support activities to academically talented, economically disadvantaged students from underrepresented populations (women, ethnic minorities, and persons with disabilities), rural communities, and Nebraska's six community colleges who wish to pursue an engineering degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This program allows the College of Engineering to increase its scholarship pool to offer an additional 11 scholarships to new freshmen, 30 scholarships to continuing students, 12 scholarships to transfer students, 16 awards for study abroad, and 20 research fellowship awards. These scholarships help recruit and retain the target populations and support the existing STEP program, which helps transition engineering students from Nebraska's community colleges to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Also, this program allows the college to develop four new initiatives including seminars, faculty mentoring sessions, a study center, and formalized service activities that build upon and complement existing student development initiatives including a learning community and peer mentoring. The project builds a more diverse student population and a cohort of scholars with an enhanced sense of academic community which positively impacts student learning, confidence, performance, and retention of scholars from the target populations; thereby creating scholars more prepared for the next phase in their life (graduate school or an engineering career).
