The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC) with a five-year grant of $1,696,448 to lead a collaboration with the University of Nevada, Reno, Western Nevada College, and Great Basin College to streamline transfer processes for students in the TMCC Engineering Program.
This grant will help cement the program’s organizational structure to build upon undergraduate educational research in this complex field of study.
“This is the first time a community college has earned this particular NSF award, emphasizing the relevance of the transfer student in engineering. This is also TMCC’s inaugural lead on an NSF grant,” said Anne Flesher, Dean of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Principal Investigator.
Two areas of the NSF, Improving Undergraduate STEM Education and Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED), are implementing a two-year track for rapid and all-encompassing integration of engineering skills.
Over the next five years, TMCC will use the observations extracted from the Engineering Pathway for Access, Community, and Transfer research and discover solutions to address national issues facing this profession.
As the pathway for engineering students is re-imagined, TMCC will cultivate diverse and well-equipped STEM experts who are engaged in their community and prepared for the workforce.
The NSF grant will alter the course structure to reflect new departmental habits and academic collaborations with leading industry enterprises.
Flesher is excited about the strategies drafted in the grant proposal, supporting the engineering transfer student, and the revolutionary effects this new course of study will have on institutions across the Nevada System of Higher Education.
“I am very thankful to NSF and RED project directors for addressing the concern of community college transfer students and supporting our work to diversify the engineering workforce,” said Flesher.
(Truckee Meadows Community College assisted with this report.)
