Phase Forward: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities

John Pellegrini, Patricia Dunlop and Yvonne Ng were awarded $600,000 from the National Science Foundation to be a test bed for effective teaching pedagogies and support structures that leverage this human-centered perspective on STEM. Using lessons from a previous grant, Enhancing Recruitment and Retention for Women in Science and Engineering (DUE0630882), work will be continued to encourage and enable students to complete degrees and pursue careers in STEM with this second proposal: “Phase Forward: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities.” Specifically, work will be done to 1) continue scholarships for another five years, with improved marketing to students of low income and under-represented populations, 2) develop culturally appropriate STEM recruitment resources for Minnesota’s growing Hmong and Somali populations, 3) support development of curricular materials that illustrate how math is applied to topics of interest to our women in pre-calculus and calculus, 4) leverage students’ interest in medicine and the environment to inform students how STEM majors and careers can help them achieve their goals by expanding the current social/professional development series and creating a bi-level STEM Careers courses