Allan Hancock College, a Hispanic-serving community college on California's central coast, offers two-year scholarships to STEM students of high academic ability but financial need. Students in engineering, biology, chemistry, geological science, physics, mathematics or computer science are freed to undertake full-time course loads, and are supported thoroughly to ensure academic success and retention in challenging STEM disciplines through their two years at the college. Built on a series of NSF- and federally-funded initiatives, the infrastructure is in place to support the scholars and facilitate their transfer to four-year institutions to complete their bachelor's degrees. Though the students study a wide variety of STEM disciplines, many of the foundational courses are common to several disciplines, so the program has a coherence that supports the student efforts. Active mentoring, monitoring of progress, and opportunities for networking with professionals in industry and academe are also integral parts of the program. With scholarship size set to meet most of the demonstrated need, the pipeline of underrepresented minority scientists and engineers is thereby opened wider.
