The University of Southern California is rapidly expanding its research through a strategy that emphasizes collaboration across disciplines, which is epitomized by the legacy of excellence in its College and professional schools. USC’s STEM focused faculty have been on the cutting edge of such research related to K-12 and university-focused STEM education, however although faculty from across campus are conducting interesting and important research, a pressing need has emerged to foster succinct interdisciplinary collaboration and communication between faculty specifically as federal funds increasingly require interdisciplinary collaboration. Key faculty (listed in Appendix A by School) have agreed to participate in our proposed Consortium from across USC in the Rossier School of Education, Viterbi School of Engineering, College of Letters and Sciences, Keck School of Medicine and School of Cinematic Arts. Supported financially and administratively by each School’s Dean, the Consortium has two specific aims:
- To strategically leverage our combined expertise in STEM education from K-12 through university to create and research a comprehensive pipeline into STEM careers.
- To support and guide faculty in engaging in interdisciplinary STEM education research through an interactive web portal with rich resources that document USC’s best practices in STEM education and provides replicable models for USC faculty to use in future research proposals.
Our intention is to extend USC’s research excellence to meet a national STEM education need, and to dramatically impact STEM K-12 educational outcomes aligned with the national STEM career agend.
The figure below represents a graphic depiction of the intersections of the proposed efforts that will be enabled by the Consortium and supported by the web portal for STEM education.
The STEM Education Consortium facilitates comprehensive and strategic planning and application for federal STEM education grants. The role of the Consortium is to convene and support groups of faculty who are interested in applying for STEM education grants and provide resources, ideas, lessons learned, best practices, and templates for collaborative grant authorship in these areas.
Funding Agency: USC Provost Office