Supporting Underrepresented STEM Scholars through the LSAMP STEM Scholars Program

Wednesday 1:35 PT / 2:35 MT / 3:35 CT / 4:35 ET Online

Authors

Janet Stomberg, Red Rocks Community College
Barbra Sobhani, University of Colorado at Boulder

The Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) is a NSF-funded program that aims to support inclusion and diversity efforts in STEM, significantly increasing the numbers of underrepresented minoritized (URM) students enrolling in and successfully completing degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. LSAMP has been active at the four-year level since the early 1990's, helping over 500,000 minoritized scholars graduate with bachelor's degrees in STEM through establishing advising and academic support systems, research pipelines, and a network of STEM professionals dedicated to a more inclusive STEM community. The LSAMP programs at the Community College level across the United States are rather new, and working to build a sustainable model of advising, industry exposure, transfer assistance, community building, and experiential learning to support retention and transfer to a four-year institution while helping Scholars build their confidence, skill sets, and resumes along the way. In this presentation, a qualitive assessment is presented which includes survey data from current and past Scholars in the sciences across a variety of majors, and student narratives regarding their experiences, including support, barriers and challenges, and successes they have experienced in their community college careers. Methods for offering students STEM engagement opportunities are also discussed, and barriers and successes of Navigators also are shared in hopes of generating discussion of best practices among colleagues in the session.