The Role Community Colleges Play in Strengthening STEMM Talent Pathways
By George Boggs, President & CEO Emeritus of the American Association of Community Colleges
Each year, millions of students – many from underrepresented populations – enter community colleges across America, but very few will pursue STEMM degrees. Only about twelve percent of associate degrees awarded by community colleges are in STEMM fields, in part due to a lack of on-ramps into STEMM for students from underrepresented communities.
Students from low-income backgrounds often have low exposure to earlier STEMM education and have less access to information about STEMM careers and majors. Community college students typically enter higher education having had less access to quality STEMM education in elementary, middle, and high school. Removing systemic inequities throughout the education system is critical to closing this gap, but community colleges themselves also have an important role to play.
Community colleges can help bridge the STEMM access gap through active outreach, recruitment, and mentoring to help their students feel confident pursuing a STEMM degree:
Outreach efforts are necessary for students and their families to understand the many career options within STEMM fields and make them feel more within reach.
Recruitment is more effective when students can see the feasibility and relevance of earning a STEMM degree.
Mentorship is proven to improve student retention, and students who experience well-designed mentorship in multiple ways – from faculty, peers, research directors, or internships – are more likely to persist and succeed.
Opportunities to participate in research are also key to engaging community college students in the STEMM fields. Traditional research projects are time-consuming and may pose outsized challenges for community college students who often juggle multiple other extracurricular responsibilities. To combat this, community colleges can take steps to infuse research opportunities into the classroom itself, or work with industry partners to facilitate hands-on training.
The need for these innovative programs to better cultivate the next generation of America’s talent is clear, but to make them a reality, community colleges need adequate funding and support. Funding and support can have significant benefits for community colleges, including through increasing full-time faculty. Although part-time or adjunct faculty can do an effective job in the classroom, having a core of full-time faculty is essential to forging long-term relationships with students and collaborating with colleagues in schools and at four-year institutions to strengthen the transfer pathway and process. Full-time STEMM faculty can also help advocate for changes within their institutions to better support STEMM students.
Fostering a community college system that uplifts STEMM education and fuels our STEMM talent pathways will not only benefit individual students and their communities, it will also help the U.S. maintain our innovation leadership on the global stage. We need to work now to prepare the workforce of the future, and community colleges have a key role to play in that endeavor.