2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Advancing Retention through Research Opportunities for Workforce Development in STEM (ARROWS) Project's mission is to increase the flow of minority women into scientific and technological careers. The ARROWS pipeline is an institutional project grant that exposes academically gifted high school and undergraduate female students to majors and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. This project has an annual summer research initiative developed to attract and cultivate the next generations of female scientists, mathematicians, and technologists. When coordinated with our partner programs, these projects assemble into a three-stage student success pipeline that guides participants from secondary education to college, then to the technical workforce or graduate study. We nurture students’ enthusiasm for STEM through an immersive, summer research experience that improves competency in four areas of national need: artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), robotics/autonomy, cybersecurity, and data analytics, specifically using hybrid learning environments. We desire to participate in overcoming the challenge of supporting traditionally underserved and underrepresented student populations in STEM such as females, minorities, and economically disadvantaged students. As the largest HBCU in the world, North Carolina A&T is well positioned academically, regionally, and culturally to support these particular prospective student demographic groups.