For many female and minority students, it may be hard to break into STEM careers (science, technology, engineering and math) if they are not given the resources throughout their education.
U.S. News and Word Report said in a story last year that the STEM workforce is no more diverse now than it was in 2001. Northwest Vista College chose to break down this barrier for over 102 students.
Thanks to a grant awarded five years ago, 102 students got the chance to not only earn hefty scholarships but opportunities to take them further in math and science. Recent grant results show the program was a success for the participants – many of them minority students who were academically talented but needed financial help.
Because of NVC’s MIM Scholarship Project, 169 scholarships were awarded at an amount of $3,466 each semester. Some students were able to get the scholarship more than once. Originally the goal was just to provide 150 scholarships over the life of the grant, but 19 more grants were awarded due to numerous applications that were submitted by students.
The five-year award was the first National Science Foundation grant awarded to Northwest Vista College, which totaled $596,049 for the entire grant cycle. The project was led by Dr. Claudia Verdin, who served as the principal investigator, and Javier Guerra and Manuel Escobar, both who served as co-principal investigators.
“The scholarships gave an opportunity to these students to meet people from the STEM fields like Southwest Research Institute,” said Claudia. “One of the many accomplishments we have is that we had a group of nine students that got accepted into UT Austin during the spring 2012 semester. Most of our students keep in touch and even invite us to their graduations. The majority of the scholarship recipients got a degree in STEM. And one of them is working on his PhD in physics at UTSA.”
What’s even more amazing is that although the project proposed to provide intensive math courses, such as calculus, to 80 percent of the recipients, 82.35 percent of the students were successful in completing their advanced math courses with grades of “B” or better, and maintaining at least a 3.0 GPA.
Initially the grant team was uncertain if students would be able to complete such rigorous math courses and maintain other requirements to keep the scholarships.
For added icing on the cake, three scholarship participants were selected to be a part of the Community College Internship at NASA, with all expenses paid. Additionally, two participants were selected by the National Science Foundation as winners of the 2013 Student Award of Excellence, and were invited to attend the Advanced Technological Education Principal Investigators conference in Washington, D.C. to receive the award.
Below were other initiatives the grant team coordinated for students:
- STEM professionals from the local business community were brought in to serve as guest speakers and mentors for students; and students got to tour local STEM businesses.
- STEM program representatives from four-year universities also came to inform students about various program offerings and the criteria for admission.
- NVC’s grant coordinators also connected students with internship and job placement opportunities in STEM areas.
- The grant team also provided mentoring and advising support services, developing academic plans with each participant and monitoring students’ progress on their degree plan.
- All participants engaged in service learning projects, which entailed tutoring math or science at the NVC tutoring lab and/or at local Northside ISD high schools.
- Learning communities were also created which resulted in various project participants taking on roles of peer-tutors, providing academic support to the grant peers, as well as other classmates not involved in the project.