advanced education or career advancement. Many Morgan State University (MSU) graduate students come from economically disadvantaged families and have very limited financial support for their full-time graduate study. Some of them solely count on the scholarships provided by the school or have to take out student loans. Supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarships for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM), NASA research grants and other Federal research grants, many MSU engineering graduate students have been involved in applied research projects with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Army Research Laboratory, and the local industry. These projects include but
inthe workplace.As part of an NSF S-STEM grant, the University of Wisconsin - Platteville implemented a seriesof professional development opportunities to STEM Master Students on a variety of topics. Inasking students about topics they wanted, students reported a need for soft skills. Knowing thestudents desire to learn about soft skills and knowing that employers find soft skills essential, theteam wanted to determine how effective incorporating professional development opportunities,called “Scholar Spots,” to the scholarship program were at increasing the student’s ability in thetopic areas.The team decided to advance students’ learning about soft skills through a series of monthlywebinars, dubbed “Scholar Spots.” Each spot was required
the rate for each group in the College of Engineering. Of those SIIRE graduatescontinuing on to graduate school, 29% are minority and 36% are female. SIIRE had successwith students participating in internships (48%) and undergraduate research (74%), and 39%have both internship and research experience.This paper will provide details about the SIIRE program and activities, share a programevaluation, discuss lessons learned and examine the future of the program.IntroductionThe Student Integrated Intern Research Experience (SIIRE) program at the University ofArkansas is funded via the NSF S-STEM program. The NSF S-STEM program provides studentscholarship funds to encourage and enable academically talented but financially needy studentsto complete
health; 4) provides corecompetencies; and 5) allows for career exploration. These transformations are particularlyimportant for students from underrepresented groups and/or underserved communities.The Preparing Engineering Graduate Students for the 21st Century (PEGS21) program at theUniversity of California, Davis (UC Davis) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarshipsin Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program targeting graduatestudent applicants who are academically talented, low-income and/or first generation. This NSFgrant will fund five cohorts over its length; the first cohort started in the 2016-2017 academic year.Through a cohort-building seminar, multi-pronged mentoring activities, and a stipend to ease
building in evaluation. With 20 years of experience in project evaluation and implementation of educational activities for over $100M in federal and state funded projects, Gwen consistently works collaboratively with her clients to maximize evaluation outcomes. As an external evaluator, Gwen has conducted over 80 evaluations in various areas with an emphasis in STEM-H related curriculum experiences at various colleges and universities across the U.S. Gwen’s work with NSF, USDOE, DOE, DOD, HRSA, and DOJ helps provide the evaluative needs and expectations of federally funded grants with regard to accountability and compliance. In addition, she has served as a panel reviewer for NSF proposals for S-STEM and other EHR
GRE from the pre and post survey with 78% ofthe participants reporting that they agreed or strongly agreed to that they felt more prepared totake the GRE. The attendance from the two workshops was recorded by the number of surveyresponses collected, which increased from 36 to 51 (42% increase).IntroductionThe NSF S-STEM program provides student scholarship funds to encourage and enableacademically talented but financially needy students to complete STEM degrees and enter theworkforce. The Student Integrated Intern Research Experience (SIIRE) project [1] addressesNSF’s programmatic goal by integrating external (industry supported) intern or co-opexperiences for students with ongoing on-campus engineering research activities to provide aguided