With a recently awarded $5.8 million federal grant, UCLA and Santa Monica College are working to encourage minority transfer students to pursue science-oriented degrees.
The grant is part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics grant program, which works to increase the amount of people who are studying in the scientific disciplines.
The largest grant from the program so far, the funds will be used to address a variety of programs and objectives during the next five years, said Alfred Herrera, the assistant vice provost for academic partnerships at UCLA.
These objectives will include employing various staff members and peer mentors who will coordinate programs with Santa Monica College, according to Herrera, who is also the director of the UCLA Center for Community College Partnerships.
These staff members and peer mentors will also be used to provide information and motivation for the students who are interested in transferring.
Increasing transfer rates for Santa Monica College’s population of Latino students will be the primary focus, but the grant will also serve other minorities, Herrera said.
Very few Latino or black students at Santa Monica College transfer to UCLA, particularly in the sciences, said Laurie McQuay-Peninger, director of grants at SMC.
Peer mentors will be former transfer students with degrees in the sciences, Herrera said.
In addition to encouraging more student transfers, the grant will be used to cement the long-standing relationship between Santa Monica College and UCLA, said Tama Hasson, who is the director of the UCLA Undergraduate Research Center for science, engineering and math.
Santa Monica College and UCLA have a partnership that has existed for more than 25 years.
This made the pairing of Santa Monica College and UCLA a competitive candidate for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics grant program, McQuay-Peninger said.
Both McQuay-Peninger and Herrera said they hope that the programs established with the grant money will continue past the five-year time frame of the grant.
Overall, only a third of the undergraduate degrees that are awarded by American universities are in disciplines in the sciences, technology, engineering or mathematics, according to the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics grant program’s website.