Outcomes of the S-STEM Scholarship Program in Our Institution in the Past Three Years

Abstract

Our institution was awarded an S-STEM grant in 2018 to continue to provide scholarships and educational opportunities to low-income and talented undergraduate mechanical engineering students. Since then, 44 undergraduate students with diverse backgrounds in Mechanical Engineering department have been awarded the scholarships. In addition to financial support, the S-STEM scholars are connected to individual faculty mentors and provided with opportunities of internships, research-related experiences, and community building activities. The large and diverse applicant pool allowed us to award 22-27 scholarships to students each year, exceeding the targeted annual number of 20 scholarships. Academic records demonstrate that all the proposed benchmarks have been exceeded, especially in the retention rate (91%), diversity of student population, research experience/internship participation (55%), and percentage of our scholars enrolled in graduate school after their graduation (29%). All are higher than that in the regular student population in our department. The results suggested that faculty and peer mentoring, proactive research-related activities, engagement in internship, and interaction with faculty and their peers might contribute positively to the success of the scholars in our program. Some of the cost-effective program activities have been implemented in our undergraduate program, and could be adapted by engineering programs in other institutions. With continuous commitment by faculty members and department/college recognition, the positive impact of the program could be sustained via merging into existing undergraduate program.