The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) announced last week that its Electrical and Computer Engineering Department has received a $1 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a system that will increase the number of scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians across America.
In the spring of 2017, Isaac Torres, who was born and raised in El Paso graduated from University of Texas-El Paso with a GPA of 4.0. He was the first in his family to graduate from college and the first in both of his extended families to pursue a Ph.D.
The new NSF award at UTEP will provide three-year scholarships to 20 students who are pursuing a fast-track bachelor to master’s degrees in UTEP’s College of Engineering. According to UTEP, the research is expected to produce a model for student success that will be disseminated nationally.
The five-year Pathways to Success in Graduate Engineering (PASSE) program will create a support system for students; implement a mentoring structure to train students as researchers, and analyze the students’ pursuit of graduate education.
Leading the effort at UTEP is Patricia Nava, Ph.D., the grant’s principal investigator and professor of electrical and computer engineering; along with co-principal investigators Miguel Velez-Reyes, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Danielle Morales, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology and anthropology.
“If successful, this support system has the potential to not only increase success rates of engineering graduate students at the university but also to improve success at other institutions that apply it,” Nava said. “As a result, this project can help meet the critical national need for a well-trained STEM workforce, particularly the need for more engineers.”
The project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income, academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields.
“No conceptual model is currently available to orient understanding of the dynamic role of educational interventions in student development through time,” Velez-Reyes said. “Therefore, the project has developed a novel three-stage student developmental trajectory model that will frame its research.”
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