2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

With higher and faster growing wages, STEM-related employment is key to rebuilding thriving communities. In the deindustrialized Midwest, the urban demographics often show higher percentages of those underrepresented in STEM, such as low socio-economic status (LSES) and underrepresented minorities (URM). These cities often have poverty rates double the national average, lower educational attainment, and the ‘brain drain’ problem. This creates barriers to developing and retaining a STEM workforce.

Funded through an NSF IUSE replication grant, the Community-Engaged Educational Ecosystem model (C-EEEM) targets deficits with which many deindustrialized cities struggle – engagement, knowledge, skill, capacity, and economic - while using an asset-based lens. Following the third replication year for the Community-Engaged Educational Ecosystem model (C-EEEM) in two other Midwestern regions, researchers have found that the C-EEEM demonstrated similar student and community outcomes in new contexts (self-efficacy, STEM-identity, place attachment). 1-5 Broadly, C-EEEM engages students in problem-based learning (PBL),6 with the community-issue becoming part of the curriculum and the community as the classroom; it delivers high-impact educational practices, 7-12 particularly for LSES and URM, while showing broader impacts in neighborhoods, industry, and attraction to the region.13 Despite fidelity to the implementation of the core elements of the C-EEEM, contextual differences at the institutional and community level meant differences in the learning environment. This paper provides a description of the distinctions of the C-EEEM delivery at the institutional level and the community level based on the implementation context, identifying asset-based adaptations. Using survey and reflection data, we explored contextual differences against student experiences and outcomes. Implications for adapting and sustaining the C-EEEM to different institutional and community contexts are then discussed.