The goal of the Science Scholarship Program of the Houston Community College System (HCCS) is to increase the number of talented underrepresented students pursuing careers in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology. HCCS is a public, comprehensive, open admission community college serving the needs of 4.2 million people in the Houston Metropolitan Area and enrolling over 50,000 students in recent years, a majority of whom are cultural or ethnic minorities and, typically, are mature adults, either seeking their first careers or learning to cope with the academic challenges of college-level courses. The project has scholarship recipients at each of five colleges of the HCCS - Central, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest Colleges - in geographically distributed regions of the city, thus offering students flexible locations and class schedules.
The Science Scholarship Program awards 30 scholarships per year to low-income students enrolled in a variety of scientific, mathematical, engineering, and technical Associate in Science and Associate in Applied Science Degree Programs, and has an objective that at least 80 percent of scholarship recipients complete a degree and enter into the workforce or transfer to a baccalaureate program. Such a retention rate occurs through a range of academic enhancements and student services including faculty advising and mentoring, field trips, seminars, college visits, a Science Scholars Club, and mentoring by Student Services Associates. A novel component of the project, meant to connect students distributed across geographically separate campuses, is the establishment of a Blackboard-based "virtual cohort" of scholarship recipients which enables them to communicate with one another, with faculty advisors, and the Student Services Associate.
