NEBRASKA: $3M NSF funded project aims to smooth STEM students’ path from 2-year to 4-year institutions
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is leading a 22-institution research collaboration aimed at smoothing this transition by building strong partnerships between two- and four-year colleges. With a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the team will conduct research aimed at filling a critical gap in the national understanding of what it takes to help transfer students succeed. Nebraska, whose share of the award is nearly $1.5 million, will headquarter the new research hub.
It is one of the first four research hubs funded through a new NSF program that builds on the agency’s long-standing Scholarships in STEM program, or S-STEM, which funds scholarships and institutional support systems for low-income STEM students. Through the research hubs, NSF aims to identify what’s working — and what’s not — at S-STEM sites using mixed-methods research. Each hub has a different focus, with the overall goal of pinpointing the conditions that facilitate success for the STEM students.
Wendy Smith, research professor of mathematics and incoming director of the Center for Science, Mathematics and Computer Education, is the project’s principal investigator.
“I think that having better and stronger partnerships between two- and four-year colleges is only going to benefit students,” Smith said. “And it will benefit the students who, in some sense, are starting higher education the most disadvantaged. This research network is a great way to try to broaden participation in STEM and meet the goals we have of a more diverse STEM workforce in the United States.”