Critical findings in the development of the community-engaged educational ecosystem

Abstract

The Bowman Creek Educational Ecosystem (BCE2) in South Bend, Indiana is a community-university, cross-institutional partnership [1] developed with a multiplicity of outcome aims-attract and retain underrepresented groups in engineering and science, improve the quality of low-income neighborhoods, and build STEM literacy across the regional workforce. Early findings, however, indicated that aside from improved engagement and confidence with STEM there were also indications of increasing retention in the region-regardless of where the student originally was from [2]. As a workforce development grant in a legacy industrial landscape, this finding proved important to explore. For this paper, researchers present findings from the analysis of the final cohort(s) of the original pilot program with an emphasis on characteristics of interest, as well as an exploration of the factors involved in place-attachment for alumni.