The NSF S-STEM program at The University of Memphis seeks to award scholarships to economically disadvantaged students in Engineering, Engineering Technology, Math, Computer Science, Biology, Chemistry, Geological Sciences, and Physics.

The primary goal of the S-STEM program is to supplement existing resources within the U of M to facilitate a unified system of support for financially disadvantaged, upper-division undergraduate STEM students with academic potential.  Our S-STEM program provides a focused, integrative experience for scholarships students by emphasizing career and personal counseling, tutoring, mentoring, career development, opportunities for summer research or application-oriented experiences, student collaboration, as well as other academic and personal advantages gained by being fully engaged in the University community.

Our S-stem project has the following supporting objectives, each with specific, measurable outcomes, which will be assessed and serve as feedback to continually improve the program:

1. Decrease the financial debt of graduates via scholarships and counseling;

2. Decrease the number of students working in non-intellectually engaging jobs by increasing opportunities for students to work on a faculty member's funded research or through approved co-op or summer internships with industry partners of our program;

3. Improve employment placement via our relationship with our industry partners;

4. Increase the graduation rate of students, particularly minority and female students;

5. Decrease the average time to degree completion for students; and

6. Increase the number of graduates who enroll in graduate school.

S-STEM Project Director: Dr. Alistair Windsor

S-STEM CO-Investigators: Ms.Regina Hairston, Dr. Stephanie Ivey, Dr. Henry Kurtz, and Ms. Karen Smith

NSF-DUE 1154368