2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program, managed by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), provides grants to institutions of higher education to disburse scholarships for low-income, high-achieving domestic students enrolled in a STEM major. Despite the crucial role that two-year colleges (2YCs) epitomize in providing open-access affordable education to a diverse student population, the majority of NSF S-STEM scholarships are awarded to four-year institutions, which tend to have specialized personnel working on the preparation and submission of proposals.
In this paper, we report a summary of the activities and evaluation of a [BLINDED] workshop, funded by the NSF S-STEM program, aiming to facilitate submissions to the NSF S-STEM program from two-year colleges (2YCs). The workshop was offered in 2019 (in person) and in 2020 and 2021 (virtual), initially to support 2YCs in the Western region of the US and was expanded nationwide in 2020. During participation in the two-day workshop, several aspects of proposal submission were reviewed, in particular, the two NSF Merit Review Criteria of Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. Pre- and post- workshop support was also available via virtual office hours and webinars that addressed specific elements required to be included in S-STEM proposals. The evaluation of the workshop has been performed via post-workshop survey administered through Qualtrics™. A journal paper reporting on the evaluation of all three offerings of the workshop has been submitted and currently in review.
In this paper, we intend to reflect on the successful features of this workshop series and the lessons learned throughout the three offerings. Over three years, 2019, 2020 and 2021, the program supported 103 participants on 51 teams from 2YCs. The program assisted at least 31 2YCs submit their S-STEM proposals to NSF, and 12 of these 2YCs received S-STEM grants. An additional 2YC proposal was first recommended for an award, but the proposal was subsequently declined for reasons unconnected to the content of proposal itself. The 3-year funding rate is 39%; if the above-mentioned proposal that received an award recommendation but was then declined is taken into account, the award rate is 42%.