Last Mile Education Fund
For decades there has been a concerted national effort to increase participation in STEM education pipelines, and enrollment in these high demand fields has grown. However, just 20% of students in the bottom two income quartiles graduate within six years of starting college, and 56% of Juniors and above report experiencing basic needs insecurity such as food, housing and connectivity. The Last Mile Education Fund launched in 2020 to reimagine college scholarships and financial aid to focus on getting students over the last mile to graduation, and to date has funded over 2400 grants to low-income tech and engineering students within four semesters of graduation. Last Mile grantees are 42% Black, 24% Latino, 16% Asian, 6% White and 2% Native American. This session will share outcomes of Last Mile's investments to date and highlight obstacles to success for students from low-income backgrounds.
Date and Time
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- Date: 12 Dec 2022
- Time: 01:00 PM to 02:00 PM
- All times are (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)
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Speakers
Dr. Sarah Lee
Professor and Director of the School of Computing Sciences & Computer Engineering at The University of Southern Mississippi
Biography:
Dr. Sarah Lee is a Professor and Director of the School of Computing Sciences & Computer Engineering at The University of Southern Mississippi. A fifth generation Mississippian, she entered academia in 2011 following a 19-year career at FedEx Corporation with a passion to broaden participation in computing. She worked for 11 years at Mississippi State University, where she served as Assistant Department Head in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering before joining USM in 2020. Sarah works collaboratively with stakeholders throughout the state to provide technical talent development programs that enable an alternative pathway and equitable access to higher wage jobs. She co-founded and launched the Last Mile Education Fund in 2020, disrupting the traditional model of scholarships by investing in striving low-income students not based on GPA, test scores, or prior achievements. Sarah holds a BS in Computer Information Systems from the Mississippi University for Women and a Master of Computer Science from Mississippi State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Memphis.