Santa monica colleges minority community college curriculum improvement project will address focus area 1, curriculum improvement in stem vocational certificate programs, AA or as degree programs,…

The U.S. government awarded a $744,984.18 cooperative agreement to the Santa Monica Community College District to implement the "Santa Monica Colleges Minority Community College Curriculum Improvement Project" under the "Building Interdisciplinary Career Skills in STEM" program. The project aims to improve student success in STEM programs at the community college by strengthening curriculum through approaches focused on contextualized instruction, interdisciplinary collaboration, applied learning, and partnerships with universities and industry, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The overall goal is to increase access, skill development, persistence, completion, and employment outcomes for underrepresented minority students in STEM. This award is not a set-aside contract. The prime contractor is the Santa Monica Community College District, and the funding agency is the Shared Services Center.

Santa monica colleges minority community college curriculum improvement project will address focus area 1, curriculum improvement in stem vocational certificate programs, AA or as degree programs, or transfer programs. SMC is recognized internationally for its transfer success, and in fact transfers more students to the university of california system than any other community college in the state. However, while many students are successful, a vast majority, including large numbers of low income students or students traditionally underrepresented in stem are not completing the foundational coursework necessary to enter the colleges existing stem pathways, including those that lead to employment and/or transfer. This project, building interdisciplinary career skills in stem, will address these challenges by strengthening curriculum through four distinct approaches that will impact access, skill development, persistence/completion, and employment. These improvements will yield the following outcomes. Improve student success in math through the increased use of contextualized instruction. Improve student acquisition of essential stem skills regardless of major through greater interdisciplinary collaboration. Increase student engagement in stem through the increased use of applied learning activities. Increase student exposure to and interest in NASA related research and careers through expanded partnerships with four year universities and industry. These outcomes will be achieved through curriculum improvements in math, science, computer science, and engineering that will yield new or improved coursework in each area. These improvements will provide critical gateway instruction and support to students interested in stem but who are at risk of not pursuing stem due to the academic and personal challenges they must overcome. Key strategies underlying these improvements include greater use of contextualized instruction and applied learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, stronger alliances between stem vocational career technical education, CTE, programs and stem transfer programs, and partnerships with four year universities and industry, including jet propulsion laboratory, university of southern california, university of california, LOS angeles, and arizona state university. These partnerships will actively engage SMC students and faculty in research activities currently underway at JPL and each of the collaborating universities, thus, contextualizing, science for students of all levels. While the overall goal of this project will be to strengthen the stem curriculum in general, the NASA mission and its research interests will be at the heart of all activities, most specifically an interdisciplinary activity that will be interwoven throughout the project, from in class activities to summer internship opportunities to extracurricular activities. This activity will include the design, build, and launch of a research instrument in space. Stem students from all disciplines will work together to accomplish this goal, including engineering students, to design and build the instrument, computer science students, to program and code the instrument, and earth science students, to develop and carry out experiments in space using the instrument. The development and launch of this instrument will not only provide students an opportunity to apply the skills they are learning in class, but IT will foster interest among students who have not yet chosen stem as their career pathway. IT will connect two year students and faculty with four year students and faculty and industry mentors to forge collaborations that will build social capital, strengthen non cognitive skills, reinforce technical skills, and generate a pipeline of well trained graduates for the NASA workforce.