Ithaca College

Dr. Orlando-Marquez C. Kittrell, founding director of the Office of State Grants (OSG), presented "STEM Student Editorial: Developing a Synergistic Pipeline for Historically Underrepresented STEM College Students" at the 14th Biennial Tri-State Conference.

The Tri-State Consortium includes educators, administrators, counselors, staff, pioneers and educational leaders mostly working in the state-supported educational opportunity programs in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York, and other programs which provide college access and opportunities for historically underrepresented, academically underprepared, disenfranchised or marginalized, and economically disadvantaged students to succeed in college. In New Jersey there is the Educational Opportunity Fund/EOF and in Pennsylvania there is the ACT 101 program.

New York State offers a variety of opportunity programs, for example, there are the Educational Opportunity Program/EOP operated through the State University of New York System, the Higher Education Opportunity Programs/HEOP operated through the New York State Education Department, and the Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge/SEEK program operated through the City University of New York.

 Dr. Kittrell presented his session during the April 23-25, 2017 conference at Bally’s Atlantic City in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  His session explored the gradual national increase in STEM-based curricula at the high school level and partnering afterschool programs but the session described the challenges for ensuring that this population of students are meaningfully guided towards entering colleges and universities that will understand some of the critical access challenges they will undoubtedly encounter when advancing in class-level status. The session particularly benefited college faculty, staff and administrators who were interested in learning how to write grant proposals to fund and support historically underrepresented STEM students at their respective institutions, thus increasing the student persistence, retention and graduation rates of those identified underrepresented students.

 OSG provides intrusive academic support services to eligible Ithaca College students participating in the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP), the Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (C-STEM) program and the Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP). The Ithaca College CSTEP and HEOP programs are funded in part through the Office of Postsecondary Access, Support and Success (OPASS) at the New York State Department of Education.