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Texas State was awarded a nearly $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Undergraduate Education on Tuesday.
The $2,499,933 grant was given to support research into improving undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education in a Hispanic Serving Institution.
“Our world’s increasing reliance on technology and data means strong STEM-focused minds will continue to be in high demand, and we should give students in these fields every advantage to succeed,” Sen. John Cornyn said in a statement. “I applaud area leaders for their work to obtain this grant, and I’m grateful to the Trump Administration for supporting the students at Texas State University.”
Heather Galloway, dean of Texas State’s Honor College will serve as the principal investigator for the 5-year grant.
According to the university, the project will aim to advance STEM education by analyzing efforts by faculty and student teams to improve introductory STEM courses at Texas State.
“The project emphasizes faculty-student partnerships to redesign courses, which have the potential to broaden participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM,” the university said in a statement. “By providing faculty with support from education specialists, peers and administrators, the project will facilitate instructional innovations to enhance student learning in STEM gateway courses. The project's key goal is to improve undergraduate STEM courses in ways that build on the students' strengths and increase the collaboration between faculty and students in the learning process.”
The project’s work will involve all eight schools, departments and programs in the College of Science and Engineering at Texas State.
“Lessons learned will inform other higher education institutions that plan to undertake similar initiatives,” the university said. “The project has the potential to increase the number of STEM degrees awarded to underrepresented minorities, thus supporting increased diversity of the national STEM workforce.
