The NSF-sponsored STEM Career Opportunities in Nebraska: Networks, Experiential-learning, and Computational Thinking (STEM CONNECT) grant, a joint project between the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (UNL), Southeast Community College (SCC) in Lincoln, NE and Western Nebraska Community College in Scottsbluff, NE, will conclude at the end of summer 2025.
The primary goal of this project was to increase the number of academically talented, low-income students who obtain an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in mathematics, computer science, or related STEM fields and enter the workforce or pursue graduate study in STEM.
UNL is a bachelors and graduate degree-granting public university with over 20,000 students. SCC is a certificate and associate's degree-granting public institution with approximately 10,000 students. WNCC is a certificate and associate's degree-granting public institution with over 1,000 students across their system. STEM faculty from SCC and UNL are active participants in the PROSPECT S-STEM grant.
At SCC, over the six-year period of the STEM CONNECT grant, scholarships were awarded to 85 different students in the amount of $748,125.50. UNL awarded scholarships to 72 different students, 41 of whom have graduated in STEM fields. Three STEM-CONNECT scholars are anticipated to graduate in 2025, and eight students to graduate in 2026 or beyond. The remaining 20 left the program, although it is notable that some who left continued with their STEM education, but elected not to continue with computer science and Mathematics courses.
The connection between SCC and UNL was strengthened through the grant. Every semester featured seminars for STEM CONNECT scholars, many of them jointly hosted across the institutions. The seminars included talks given by the STEM faculty at various institutions as well as industry professionals, industry tours, career workshops and networking activities with the scholars from the other institutions. Some topics and industries that were highlighted in the joint seminars included Mathematics in Gerrymandering, Mathematics for Machine Learning, Voting Methods, Gallup, REUs, Oak Ridge National Lab, A Day in the Life of a NASA Mathematician, Career Pathways - Getting to Google, Duncan Aviation Field Trip, Sports Analytics & Data Science, Hudl Tour, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Don't Panic Labs, NUTech Ventures, Data Science & National Lab Opportunities,Escape Room, Voting Methods, Monolith Industry Tour, S-STEM Conference Debrief/Panel, STEM CONNECT alumni panel, Cybersecurity Panel, and Li-COR tour.
STEM CONNECT supported a curriculum development retreat featured in an earlier Pulse of PROSPECT https://newsroom.unl.edu/announce/pulse/18244/99783). It also supported the hybrid workshop, "Introduction to Mathematics for Machine Learning and Data Science," in June 2024.
The grant also funded the development of courses at SCC that aligned with STEM major options at UNL. Four Computer Science courses and three new Mathematics courses were developed. The grant also provided limited funding for the development of the curriculum for the new Data Science program as well as the funding for the SCC faculty to learn about UNL’s Online Education Resources (OER).
STEM CONNECT scholars are already going on to do impressive things. Two Scholars received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, one Scholar received the Fulbright scholarship , and another who won the Gilman scholarship. Several have gone onto industry and graduate school including positions at Bose, Microsoft, Oracle, NRC Health, Nelnet, Duncan Aviation, Huffman Engineering, and Union Pacific. And others have gone onto graduate school at UNL, UC Boulder, UNMC, among others.
One huge outgrowth of STEM CONNECT is the PROSPECT S-STEM hub. As a STEM CONNECT PI, Wendy Smith attended an S-STEM PI meeting in which she identified other future PROSPECT collaborators who were interested in studying S-STEM projects which involved partnerships between associate-granting and bachelors-granting institutions to connect research and practice to better support low-income STEM transfer students.
With thanks to Sandeep Holay (Professor at Southeast Community College, Lincoln, NE) and Rachel Funk (PostDoc at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln) for the original text; compiled and edited by Theresa Jorgensen (Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington).