The National STEM Consortium, 2011–2015

A grant-funded partnership

The National STEM Consortium was a partnership of ten community colleges in nine states that began in 2011, according to the introduction to Hezel Associates’ external evaluation. Anne Arundel Community College led and managed the partnership. Its work focused on technician education shaped around regional employers’ needs. The participating institutions developed technical curricula, teaching materials, and student support arrangements. This was a defined grant initiative, with participating colleges contributing to a shared effort rather than becoming a single institution.

The U.S. Department of Labor funded the project through TAACCCT, a community-college and career-training initiative associated with trade-adjustment policy. The Office of Community College Research and Leadership’s brief described TAACCCT as $2 billion in capacity-building grants beginning in October 2011 and identified the consortium as one of 23 Round One consortia. SkillsCommons’ showcase recorded the consortium’s Round One award as $19,730,281. The funding supported curriculum development and cooperation among colleges, workforce partners, and employers; it was a project award, rather than a benefit promised to an individual reader.

The participating colleges

The evaluation located Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland; Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio; College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois; and Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood, Washington. It also listed Florida State College at Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Florida; Ivy Tech Community College across Indiana; and Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan. The remaining partners were NorthWest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, Arkansas; Roane State Community College in Harriman, Tennessee; and South Seattle Community College in Seattle, Washington. These institutional names and locations came from the evaluation’s institution table.

That geographical spread mattered to how the project was organized. The evaluation described common technical curricula that colleges could customize for regional labor markets. The partners were not interchangeable delivery sites: institutional resources, student populations, scheduling systems, and regional needs differed. The college profiles distinguish their historical track assignments. The evaluation’s recommendations emphasized adaptation to a college’s circumstances, rather than treating a shared curriculum as a reason to assume identical local programs.

Technical pathways and STEM Bridge

The consortium developed five technical tracks: Composites and Cyber Technology, alongside Electric Vehicle Technology; Environmental Technology and Mechatronics completed the set, as the external evaluation recorded. The Open Education Consortium’s showcase described each certificate as a 30-credit pathway intended for one year of full-time study. The tracks covered different technical subjects, but they shared an educational structure and a basic-skills component. Their common name did not mean that every college participated in every track.

STEM Bridge supplied contextualized refreshers in mathematics, workplace communication, and professionalism. The Open Education Consortium described STEM Readiness as the broadly shared course and FAST TRACK as a more intensive approach connected to the technical fields. The Open Learning Initiative’s cyber pathway description identified STEM Foundations as providing elements of that intensive approach. The distinction concerned different levels of preparation, rather than different technical credentials. The STEM Bridge discussion for educators examines this relationship between readiness and technical instruction.

The education model also combined cohort organization, block scheduling, a compressed timeline, hybrid instruction, employer relationships, and tailored advising through a navigator. The external evaluation treated these as related parts of the model. It could not identify a single decisive element behind student achievement; staff particularly credited navigator support and peer support within cohorts. The completion model explains those components alongside the evaluation’s cautions. The reported associations were not a guarantee that a different program would reproduce the same outcomes.

What the evaluation reported

Hezel Associates combined interviews, student questionnaires, program documents, and existing student data. The findings therefore included both numerical records and accounts from project staff, employers, and participants. Its final conclusions reported that 1,372 students had begun a technical track against a participation goal of 1,279, and that 656 had completed their program, representing 64% of the project target of 1,023, in the evaluation’s conclusions. The report warned that participation and completions at grant end were probably higher, but those data were unavailable when it was written.

The same evaluation reported retention of 82%, exceeding the 80% target and the national community college comparison of 75%. Hezel Associates also reported that term-to-term retention was 11% higher than for typical community college students and that the completion rate was almost 70% higher, in its discussion of the model. These comparisons described the consortium’s reported results. Retention and completion were separate measures, and neither figure established which component of the model caused the result.

The evaluation’s quantitative analysis reported that 18% of female participants completed within the expected timeframe, compared with 82% of male participants. Hezel Associates said the reason was unclear. It considered possible explanations involving program content, participant characteristics, and support directed toward female students, while cautioning that more complete student data might produce different results. The report did not settle those explanations. The gap was a reason for further investigation, rather than evidence of a fixed difference in students’ ability.

According to project staff, approximately 70% of completers had found employment, as Hezel Associates reported. The report described favorable employer responses and direct hiring relationships with technical-track faculty. Separately, SkillsCommons recorded 1,372 participants, 656 students who completed and earned a credential, and 459 employed after completion, expressly identifying those measures as being available at the time of the final evaluation. The counts and the staff estimate belonged to that historical reporting context. They were not a present placement rate or a prediction for a reader.

Open materials and the end of the structure

The Open Education Consortium’s showcase described release under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The external evaluation recorded that curricula, program guides, teaching toolkits, lesson plans, and assessments had been placed on Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative and SkillsCommons. Sharing the materials made curriculum content accessible beyond the participating colleges. It did not transfer responsibility for a college’s academic award to the repository, or make independent study equivalent to completion of a college certificate.

SkillsCommons recorded the grant as completed on 9/30/15. The evaluation’s ERIC record stated that “the future of the consortium is not clear,” and the full report’s recommendations said the “formal consortium structure will no longer exist.” Hezel Associates expected some informal relationships to continue, but also warned that publicly hosted technical content could become stale without a maintenance plan. The published curricula remain available as open educational resources through the Open Learning Initiative’s pathway materials; its course platform describes access to full courses and individual modules. Colleges set their own programs and should be asked directly about their present arrangements.