The William Paterson team that worked on obtaining the grant project includes: Principal investigator Jyoti A. Champanerkar, professor, mathematics, along with co-principal investigators Paul von Dohlen, professor, mathematics; Cyril S. Ku, professor, computer science; Weihus (Daisy) Liu, assistant professor, computer science; Djanna Hill, chairperson, Department of Community and Social Justice Studies and professor, teacher education.
Over the five-year duration, the project will support 26 first-year and transfer students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, computer science, or computer information technology. First year students will receive scholarship support for up to four years and transfer students will receive up to two years of scholarship support.
With this grant award, William Paterson intends to enroll three cohorts of low-income, academically talented students as mathematics and computer science (MaCS) scholars and support them with scholarships. The University will also work to improve year-over-year retention rates for MaCS scholars who are first-time, full-time, first-year or transfer students, and improve graduation rates for all MaCS scholars. The funds will also support a research study that investigates the relationship between college retention for low-income students and strength-based, culturally responsive mentoring. The proposed project will also refine the recruitment pipeline of females into the target STEM majors, which will increase enrollment and consequentially increase the number of underrepresented STEM graduates entering the workforce.
The grant award will also allow the University to develop leadership programs at its seven partner schools, which include:
- Bergen Community College
- Passaic County Community College
- Passaic County Technical – Vocational Schools
- Manchester Regional High School
- Paterson Charter School for Science & Technology
- The School of STEM, Paterson Public Schools JFK Educational Complex
- School of Information Technology, Paterson Public Schools
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.