STEM TEST
group of Cal State Long Beach professors is creating a multifaceted program for Hispanic students, an initiative being touted as an innovative approach to increasing diversity in the STEM field.
Professors from the College of Engineering (COE), College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (CNSM), and the College of Business (COB) received a $2.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to build the “active learning educational program” called LEAP.
As part of the program, Cal State Long Beach is seeking business partners in the STEM industry, giving third- and fourth-year students the opportunity to work on year-long projects with businesses in their fields. Students will work with a team of mentors to ensure success: a faculty mentor from their college, an industry mentor from the business they’re paired with, a business advisor to help with their business action plans, and a compliance advisor who will monitor safety and ethical issue related to their respective projects.
“We think we’re the first in the nation to have a program like this, because part of this call from the National Science Foundation was to create something innovative,” said Associate Professor Dr. Shahab Derakhshan, the CNSM Coordinator for the program. “So, the fact that our grant proposal was reviewed under ‘innovation’ means there’s nothing exactly like it.”
Dr. Ehsan Barjasteh, an engineering professor and the principal investigator of the grant, said the program is needed to diversity the STEM workforce nationwide, especially in management-level positions.
Although the United States is seeing a higher percentage of women and ethnic minorities demographically, STEM professionals will remain overwhelmingly white throughout the next few decades with only 12% Hispanic and Black representation in the STEM workforce, according to the grant proposal.
