National Science Foundation Awards $300K to FSC
February 11, 2019
Dr. Erwin Cabrera
A National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in the amount of $300,000 over five years has been awarded to FSC for a program that will bring minority PhD students in the STEM fields to FSC, where our faculty will mentor them as teaching assistants, with the goal of hiring them as full-time faculty.
The grant was made directly to FSC, made possible by a proposal written by Dr. Erwin Cabrera, associate director of the RAM Program. FSC will work with Suffolk County Community College and Stony Brook University, which will be the feeder school for PhD STEM students coming to FSC. According to the NSF, this is a model focusing on “career development for historically underrepresented minority doctoral degree students in STEM, who successfully transition into early career STEM faculty positions at predominately undergraduate institutions.”
The grant provides not only for faculty stipends, but has a substantial budget for new technology in innovative pedagogical practices.
Said Dr. Cabrera: “Through this program, the Stony Brook doctoral students that will be hosted by our FSC STEM departments will get the experience of being integrated into the academic environment, interacting with the faculty on campus, and most importantly, our students. The average underrepresented minority undergraduate student in the United States does not see themselves reflected in the faculty at their respective institutions. It is important that as one of the fastest-growing public colleges in the country, we at FSC take charge in making a change.
“By building a pipeline program for prospective underrepresented minority faculty to be exposed to the FSC academic culture, this ultimately will create a mechanism for potentially hiring these scholars that have already been integrated into the campus community, making that transition seamless. We aim through this project not only to make a change locally but to create a model in which schools like ours can emulate, to tackle this issue nationwide.”
