Paine College, founded in 1882, is a historically black college (HBCU) located in Augusta, GA, with an enrollment of about 900 students. The overarching goals of the Paine College STEM Education Pipeline Project are to increase the number of qualified, baccalaureate-seeking minority students in the STEM disciplines; and to provide a seamless pipeline from high school to college to graduate and professional schools or the STEM workforce for qualified minority students interested in STEM disciplines. Proposed objectives and activities to achieve these goals are curriculum revision, faculty development, and student recruitment and retention. The curriculum revision component is to enhance and update the content, activities, laboratory exercises and pedagogical methods in gate-way courses in order to create a learning environment that is stimulating, interactive, hands-on, as well as meaningful and useful for students entering STEM disciplines at Paine College. The faculty development component will provide STEM faculty with opportunities and incentives to become more effective in the areas of teaching, student-learning, research, use of technology, STEM curricular design, and the intersections of these areas. Student retention activities are centered around tutoring, undergraduate research activities, graduate and professional school preparation workshops, internships and other activities to enhance STEM students' competitiveness for graduate and professional programs in the STEM disciplines.
