Cagdas Onal, associate professor and head of WPI’s Department of Robotics Engineering, will lead the project as principal investigator. Onal argued that widening access to STEM education is both a moral and practical imperative. “It is important to give students from all backgrounds the opportunity to contribute to STEM fields,” he said. “If we remove the financial constraints that make it difficult for students to devote themselves to learning, those students will be able to graduate at higher rates, succeed in STEM careers, and live as productive citizens.” His framing captures the central premise of the initiative: that students constrained by the need to work excessive hours or shoulder family financial obligations cannot fully engage with the intensive, project-driven style of education that defines modern engineering programs.

Onal will collaborate with a team of faculty from across the university, including three co-principal investigators: Berk Calli, associate professor of robotics engineering; Gillian Smith, professor in the Department of Computer Science and director of WPI’s Interactive Media and Game Development Program; and Yunus Telliel, director of the Great Problems Seminar program and assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Arts and the Interactive Media and Game Development Program. The breadth of this leadership team is deliberate. Robotics, smart infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing are inherently interdisciplinary domains, sitting at the intersection of mechanical design, software, sensing, human factors, and social context, and the program’s architects want the scholarship recipients to be mentored by faculty who can guide them across those boundaries rather than within the silos of a single department.

The wider faculty group involved in the project extends this interdisciplinary reach further. It includes Carrick Eggleston, professor; Paul Mathisen, associate professor and director of sustainability; and Nima Rahbar, the Ralph H. White Family Professor and department head, all of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering; Pratap Rao, professor of the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering; Sarah Strauss, professor of the Department of Integrative and Global Studies; and Jing Xiao, professor of robotics engineering. This constellation of expertise spans the technical core of the three target fields while also incorporating perspectives on sustainability, global studies, and the human dimensions of technology, signaling that the program intends to develop engineers who understand the societal implications of the systems they build.

The team will recruit applicants studying in four fields: robotics engineering; mechanical and materials engineering; civil, environmental, and architectural engineering; and interactive media and game development. Scholarships will be available to undergraduates who receive Pell Grants, the federal financial aid designation for students from low-income households, and to graduate students who can demonstrate financial need. The choice of Pell eligibility as the primary undergraduate criterion is significant because it targets a population with well-documented outcomes gaps. “Pell-eligible students have lower retention and graduation rates than other four-year undergraduates,” said Smith. “Scholarships will help lift a financial burden for these students, while supporting them in pursuing exciting, interdisciplinary opportunities in design that open doors for a wide variety of internships and future career pathways.”

Recruiting transfer students is a central strand of the plan. The team will seek applicants at Quinsigamond, Mount Wachusett, Berkshire, Holyoke, and MassBay community colleges in Massachusetts, as well as Northern Essex and Manchester community colleges in New Hampshire. WPI already maintains transfer partnership agreements with some of these institutions, arrangements that smooth the credit-transfer process and reduce the friction that often causes community college students to stall or abandon their pursuit of a four-year degree. By formalizing pipelines from two-year institutions into a research university, the program aims to capture students whose academic potential may have outpaced their initial circumstances, whether those circumstances involved cost, geography, or an uncertain start in higher education.

Beyond the scholarships themselves, the team will develop programs that build on WPI’s established strength in project-based learning, including the Great Problems Seminar, a first-year course that immerses students in complex real-world challenges. Faculty members will mentor students as they complete interdisciplinary projects at multiple levels of their education, and participants will gain access to WPI’s summer educational programs. The faculty team will also partner with companies and nonprofit organizations to provide internship opportunities, connecting scholarship recipients to professional networks that low-income students often lack. In technical fields where hiring decisions frequently hinge on demonstrated hands-on experience, internships function as a critical bridge between coursework and career, and their inclusion in the program design acknowledges that tuition relief alone does not equalize opportunity.

Calli emphasized that the program will leverage WPI’s graduation requirement that all students complete research projects focused on real-world problems. “All students at WPI must complete research projects focused on real-world problems to graduate, and our programs will enable students to shape those required projects into multiyear, interdisciplinary collaborations that can help pave the way for their future careers,” he said. “We place great importance on empowering students to make a positive impact in their communities, and this program will provide many such opportunities, from assistive robotics in healthcare to solutions in waste management.” The examples he cites illustrate the applied orientation of the initiative: assistive robotics combines mechanical engineering, control systems, and human-centered design to address mobility and care challenges, while waste management solutions draw on civil and environmental engineering, sensing technologies, and data analysis.

The new program is not WPI’s first NSF-supported effort of this kind. The university received $2.5 million in 2023 for scholarships and programs, still under way, serving low-income computer science undergraduates. Earlier initiatives focused on students in renewable energy fields and on undergraduates who were the first in their families to attend college. This accumulation of programs suggests an institutional strategy of iterating on scholarship-plus-mentoring models across different technical domains, refining the interventions with each cycle and extending support to new cohorts and disciplines. The new award will examine how a coordinated set of such interventions can help talented students from low-income backgrounds succeed at WPI, and Telliel said the resulting insights will be especially important in the rapidly evolving fields of robotics, smart infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing.

“Technological change requires us to broaden our understanding of the capabilities essential to STEM,” Telliel said. “Students who can link technical design with human experience and social impact will shape the future workforce in technology and engineering. By cultivating those capabilities throughout the undergraduate education, this project will identify effective ways to help more students thrive while generating insights that can be shared with universities across the country.” That ambition to produce transferable findings distinguishes the project from a purely local scholarship fund. If the coordinated model of financial aid, sustained faculty mentorship, interdisciplinary project work, and industry internships demonstrably raises retention and graduation rates, the results could inform how institutions nationwide structure their own support programs for low-income STEM students, at a moment when the demand for engineers and technologists continues to outpace the domestic supply.

Subject of Research: NSF-funded scholarship and mentoring program for low-income STEM students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Article Title: National Science Foundation awards $2 million to Worcester Polytechnic Institute for student scholarships and STEM programs

Article References: National Science Foundation awards $2 million to Worcester Polytechnic Institute for student scholarships and STEM programs. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: National Science Foundation, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, STEM education, scholarships, robotics engineering, smart infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, Pell Grants, transfer students, project-based learning, low-income students, STEM workforce