Sunday, July 27, 2025, 12:22AM | 
MENU
Advertisement
High school students Tyonna Bristo and Ava Kiraly isolate DNA from bacteria found within a flower growing on the University of Pittsburgh campus during summer classes during the precollege STEM research program, Gene Team.
4
MORE

$10M Pitt grant to address enrollment gap in STEM fields

Rebecca Gonda

$10M Pitt grant to address enrollment gap in STEM fields

Disparities by race and ethnicity within the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math show up well before college, continue on campus and affect the workforce, experts say.

Addressing that enrollment and success gap, and promoting a more robust pipeline in STEM for various underrepresented groups, are reasons why the National Science Foundation Tuesday announced a $10 million grant to a team of University of Pittsburgh researchers and an outside group.

The Pitt researchers are part of the university’s Broadening Equity in STEM (BE STEM) Center, located in the Kenneth Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences.

Advertisement

It and an organization called the STEM Learning Ecosystem Community of Practice (SLECoP) have been chosen to create a network of precollege programs with accreditation standards, officials said.

The five-year grant will establish Pitt as headquarters for a national collaborative of “precollege programs, STEM educators, college admissions professionals and other stakeholders committed to increasing racial and ethnic diversity in STEM,’’ university officials said in a statement announcing the award. “It will also support the creation of an accreditation model to communicate the validity of these precollege programs to college admissions officers.”

The work should help raise the profile of these precollege programs among college admission offices, suggested Alison Slinskey Legg, principal investigator and co-director of Pitt’s BE STEM Center.

The National Academy of Sciences has found that the fastest-growing population segments are the least represented in STEM fields, Pitt officials said. The number of racially and ethnically underrepresented students in science and engineering fields would have to triple to match their share in the population, university officials said.

Advertisement

Pitt cited a recent NSF report as one view of the imbalance. It found that excluding temporary visa holders, the number of science and engineering degrees awarded to white students increased between 2000 and 2015, though their share slipped from 71% to 61%. The share awarded to Hispanic students increased from 7% to 13%, and the share of degrees increased for Asians from 9% to 10%. The share earned by black students — at 9% —has been flat since 2000.

A number of precollege programs nationwide already help expose students to college and to fields they might not otherwise pursue, said Alaine Allen, co-principal investigator.  Among them is Pitt’s Investing Now, in which 150 students annually attend quarterly advising sessions, tutoring, hands-on science and engineering workshops, college planning sessions and career awareness activities.

David Boone, another co-investigator and assistant professor in Pitt’s medical school, said there is a benefit to college admissions officers understanding what is accomplished in precollege programs.

“At Pitt, we are able to demonstrate that board scores such as the SATs are more predictive of a student’s race or ethnicity than their persistence in STEM, so we need to find a metric that better predicts success,” he said. “We believe that successful participation in STEM precollege programming is one such metric.”

Bill Schackner: bschackner@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1977 and on Twitter: @Bschackner.

 

First Published: September 17, 2019, 11:32 a.m.

RELATED
SHOW COMMENTS (0)  
Join the Conversation
Commenting policy | How to Report Abuse
If you would like your comment to be considered for a published letter to the editor, please send it to letters@post-gazette.com. Letters must be under 250 words and may be edited for length and clarity.
Partners
Advertisement
A huge Canadian flag carried by a crowd in Montreal in 1995, before a referendum on Quecec’s independence. Dennis Jett suggests Pennsylvania do the same in reverse.
1
opinion
Dennis Jett: Pennsylvania should become part of Canada
There is a large covered porch at the front of the house at 115 Forest Hills Road in Forest Hills.
2
life
Buying Here: Forest Hills home in its own 'mini-forest' listed for $425,000
Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers throws a touchdown pass to DK Metcalf during Steelers Training Camp at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe on Friday, July 25, 2025.
3
sports
Steelers training camp observations: Aaron Rodgers, receivers bring 'wow' factor to Day 2
A woman charged under the name Shannon Nicole Womack is accused of using fake names, fake references and fake credentials at staffing agencies to secure nursing jobs across Pennsylvania and beyond. Pennsylvania State Police urged health care providers across the state to check their records and study the woman’s photo to help identify other facilities she might have duped.
4
news
Pittsburgh 'fake nurse' linked to 5 more Pennsylvania facilities
Several houses are shown along N. Dallas Avenue near Penn Avenue in Point Breeze with “For Sale” signs in the front yard, Friday, March 21, 2025.
5
business
A cooling market and patient buyers are causing many Pittsburgh home sellers to cut their prices
High school students Tyonna Bristo and Ava Kiraly isolate DNA from bacteria found within a flower growing on the University of Pittsburgh campus during summer classes during the precollege STEM research program, Gene Team.  (Rebecca Gonda)
High school student Tyonna Bristo works to visualize the DNA of bacteria found in a flower on the University of Pittsburgh campus this summer during classes during the precollege STEM research program, Gene Team.  (John Altdorfer)
High school students Angel Alston, Karson Kennedy, Terri-Lynn Miles and Jayce Sledge work on a group project during a 2018 Summer Enrichment session for the University of Pittsburgh pre-college engineering program, INVESTING NOW.  (Rebecca Gonda)
High school student Ngwang Gurung isolates DNA from bacteria found within a flower growing on the University of Pittsburgh campus during summer classes during the precollege STEM research program, Gene Team.  (John Altdorfer)
Rebecca Gonda
Advertisement
LATEST news
Advertisement
TOP
Email a Story