Posted on February 24, 2013

North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation Awards $1.76 Million for STEM Center

North Carolina A&T State University has announced a five-year, $1.76 million grant from the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation to establish a Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Center of Excellence for Active Learning.

The grant will support two strategic "pipeline" programs at the high school level providing more than five thousand students a year with a strong foundation in STEM fields: a summer enrichment program that immerses high school juniors in critical applications of science, computational science, and mathematics and prepares them for SATs and college; and a pre-matriculation bridge program that immerses incoming college freshmen in chemistry and pre-calculus courses and offers workshops to strengthen oral and written communication, critical thinking, time management, leadership, business etiquette, and financial management. By building a university-based community of faculty scholars in science education, the project also aims to support course redesigns, group-based education, and a new community of practice for student learning.

"The N.C. GSK Foundation has a long history of supporting science and education in North Carolina," said the foundation's executive director, Marilyn Foote-Hudson. "We are proud to provide this grant to N.C. A&T State University that will not only increase the number of adults in STEM careers, but will also increase diversity in the STEM workforce."