A program to help more low-income and minority students major in engineering has been so successful that the National Science Foundation (NSF) is expanding it.
The federal agency has awarded $5?million to six universities, including the University of Washington and Washington State University, to expand or create ” academic redshirt ” programs. These programs enroll promising engineering students from low-income households – many of them women and minorities – and give them an additional year of math and science courses before they enter the engineering major. Redshirting is an idea borrowed from college athletics, in which student-athletes get an extra year to mature.
The award will make scholarship money available to 800 students studying engineering at six schools, including three that already have the program – UW, WSU and the University of Colorado, Boulder – and three new schools: Boise State University; the University of California, San Diego; and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
The UW will be the lead university guiding the program expansions.
In this state, the program is known as Washington State Academic Red Shirt program, or STARS, and it has an 80 percent retention rate, said Eve Riskin, associate dean of diversity and access in the UW College of Engineering.