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Cultivating the STEM
In 2006, Essex County College was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help increase enrollment, retention, graduation and transfer rates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The project, titled “Cultivating the STEM”, will provide nearly $1 million over a five-year period. Students from the divisions of Biology and Chemistry, Engineering Technologies & Computer Sciences and Mathematics and Physics will benefit from a variety of activities through the project.
Under the NSF grant, the MESA Center has taken a new approach to helping students through an expansion of services, which include:
The grant also fostered the creation of two new programs which assists the needs of both incoming and outgoing students:
a Bridge-In program which exposes high school and college freshman students to and prepares them for the STEM fields and uses contextual learning to address their developmental needs
a Bridge-Out program that provides students with cooperative education internships in industries and assistance for a successful transfer to four-year universities in the STEM fields
The project uses a holistic approach to STEM education through immersing students in a culture and environment that addresses their different learning styles and academic needs. It identifies every conceivable variable that may serve as a barrier and impediment to academic success and provides an intervention to address those obstacles. In the six months in the academic year 2006-07, six faculty mentors and eight student tutors worked in the MESA center to help students. Approximately 100 students participated in mentoring and 150 students received tutoring. The summer 2007 Bridge-In program offered pre-college mathematics courses to a cohort of 22 incoming STEM students to prepare them to advance to college-level courses. The College intends to expand the project by including all STEM majors, in addition to the six initially targeted disciplines. The College also plans to improve the summer Bridge-In program by enrolling more students and providing better services.