No, that’s not my age. It’s just that we have added 55th NSF grant evaluation to our growing portfolio.
Feather River Community College District (FRC) in north-eastern California, one of the smallest, most rural, and remote community colleges within the California Community College System was recently awarded $750K through the National Science Foundation’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) grant.
Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships up to 43 community college students who are pursuing associate’s degrees in Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, or Physical Sciences. Full-time STEM students will receive up to 6 semesters of scholarships and part-time students (enrolled for at least 6 semester units) will receive up to 8 semesters of scholarships based on financial need.
The project, FRC SOAR, aims to increase the parity of rural STEM students with their urban peers, as they enter and graduate from FRC’s Associate of Science programs in order to transfer vertically in STEM or to join governmental organizations or industry in a STEM capacity.
Rural community colleges are the fastest growing sector of U.S. community colleges and thus represent one of the greatest future opportunities to impact STEM workforce development.
As a small, rural, and geographically remote community college, FRC SOAR has significant potential to become a model to advance understanding of how to effectively and efficiently support rural STEM students as they navigate the rural STEM pipeline.
MNA is very proud to continue their ongoing evaluation work for the S-STEM grants since 2015. This is the eighth S-STEM project for us and 55th NSF grant evaluation.
PI is Dr. Anna Thompson and Dr. Cameron Sublett of WestEd is the social science researcher. Looking forward to working with them.
