Our Mission
The STEM Career Opportunities in Nebraska: Networks, Experiential-learning, and Computational Thinking (STEM CONNECT) is an NSF-funded S-STEM (Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) scholarship program forming a partnership among the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), Southeast Community College (SCC), and Western Nebraska Community College (WNCC).
Launched in Fall 2019, STEM CONNECT awarded scholarships to and provides curricular and co-curricular support to academically talented, low-income students with interest in careers that require strong skills in mathematics or computer science. A major goal of the program is to promote STEM disciplines. Graduates from our community college STEM CONNECT programs have gone on to, among other things, procure jobs in software engineering, IT, and nuclear energy. Additionally, several graduate students are pursuing graduate school.
STEM CONNECT scholar Santiago Giraldo discusses unmanned aerial vehicles at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's NIMBUS (Nebraska Intelligent MoBile Unmanned Systems) Lab in 2022.
Final Report
After six years of students participating in STEM Connect we are proud to present our final report on the accomplishments of the program.
STEM CONNECT News
Inside Higher Ed Spotlight
Inside Higher Ed featured an article about STEM CONNECT after UNL's largest cohort to date graduated in May 2023. For more details read the article. Also, learn more about the May 2023 graduating cohort
December 2023 Graduates
In December 2023 five Scholars graduated, including two transfer students from SCC:
Nataliya Brana, B.S. in mathematics
Brana plans to join the workforce.
Michael Sanders, B.S. in computer science
Sanders plans to join the workforce.
Mohammed Sbai, B.S. in mechanical engineering, SCC transfer
Sbai plans to go to graduate school.
Abby Seibel, B.S. in computer engineering
Seibel has accepted a position at Union Pacific.
Shawn Shonerd, B.S. in civil engineering, SCC transfer
Shonerd has accepted a position at Houston Engineering.
STEM CONNECT Spotlight
I was always a straight-A student, so I was really terrified of failing. The first time I started coding and it wouldn't work, I’d think, ‘Oh no, I failed. But now, I think, ‘Oh no, that's just how it is.’ I really want to inspire people not to be afraid of failing in computer science because that's a big part of it.
Abby Seibel, Computer Engineering major and STEM CONNECT Scholar
Learn more about Abby
Events
"From Football to Math and Back," with Eric Eager, Ph.D.
Abstract: American Football is undergoing a significant shift to the quantitative. Once a game where only the biggest and strongest could contribute, teams are increasingly leaning into modern statistical tools to give themselves an edge. This has coincided with an increase in popularity for the game, which in turn has led to an increase in gaming offering for fans — enhanced by mathematical approaches to understanding the game. In this talk, I will survey the accomplishments of football analytics and preview what is to come for America’s favorite sport.
Bio: Eric Eager is the vice president of research and development at SumerSports, a startup aimed at helping football teams optimize their decision making processes. He was previously at Pro Football Focus, where he built an industry-leading analytics group. Prior to joining PFF, he earned a Ph.D. in mathematical biology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and went on to publish 25 papers in math, biology and the scholarship of teaching and learning while a professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
