The SAN Program aims to increase diversity in materials research and education with a goal of increasing diversity of the STEM pipeline of Under Represented Minority (URM), women, and persons with disabilities. 

Max Funding Amount Per Award: $10,000
Duration: 12 months
 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded over $60,000,000 in Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) awards to 1) increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need obtaining degrees in S-STEM eligible disciplines and entering the workforce or graduate programs in STEM; 2) improve the education of future scientists, engineers, and technicians, with a focus on low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need; and 3) generate knowledge to advance understanding of how interventions or evidence-based curricular and co-curricular activities affect the success, retention, transfer, academic/career pathways, and graduation of low-income students in STEM.

Dr. John Wheeler, Associate Provost for Integrative Science and Professor of Chemistry, in the Department of Chemistry at Furman University received a $999,814 NSF S-STEM Award which will start on October 1, 2020. Over its five-year duration, the project will fund scholarships to 24 unique full-time students pursuing bachelor degrees in Chemistry, Biology, Neuroscience, or Geosciences. Scholars will receive up to $10,000/year in scholarship support, renewable for four years. They will also engage in evidence-based support and services, including an eight-day summer bridge experience. Scholars will receive cohort-based advising that includes weekly seminar/workshop meetings during their first two years. They will further benefit from curricular enhancements, including an adaptive online review of precalculus, and joint enrollment in introductory chemistry and first-year writing courses that use active learning and peer learning assistants. Scholars will also benefit from guaranteed support for early undergraduate research experiences. Click here for more information on Furman's NSF S-STEM award.

The MADE in SC project is engaging High School STEM teachers in South Carolina through the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program. RET seeks to link STEM teachers with a college/university faculty member in their local area. The teacher completes a 6-week (200 hours) research experience under the direction of their faculty mentor while also developing plans to link their research experience to their curricular instruction during the next academic year. MADE in SC provides funding for 7 teacher experiences per year (providing a teacher stipend, supplies for the research mentor and additional supplies funds to support the teacher in linking the experience back to their classroom). While this program is managed by Dr. John Kaup (Director of Science Education at Furman University), the 19 experiences to date have occurred at 8 separate institutions around South Carolina.

While the RET in Summer 2018 and 2019 followed this format of linking teachers to a school in their local area, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted all and a new approach was needed to deliver the RET program. As campuses across the state shifted toward remote research opportunities, so did the RET. While the RET was not able to engage the full complement of 7 teachers, the program did provide research experiences for 4 SC STEM teachers. As one example, Josh Carroll (Physics teacher; Eastside High School, Greenville) was matched with Dr. Ana Oprisan (Physics; College of Charleston) and completed a mathematical modeling project that studied the thermodynamic nature of oxygen in the critical region. In addition to the completed research, Josh was also introduced to MATLAB as a modeling software and has already developed lesson plans to link his developing MATLAB expertise to curricular instruction in Physics back at his institution. Click here for more information on the RET experience.