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Creators/Authors contains: "Vernaza, Karinna M."

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  1. In 2008, Gannon University was awarded a National Science Foundation S-STEM grant, which provided scholarship funding in engineering and computer sciences for academically talented students having financial need. The program developed at Gannon University was designed to be quite extensive, providing an educational experience emphasizing not only technical mastery, but personal and professional development and community service through partnerships with nonprofit organizations in the local community. At the time of its development, the program was one-of-a-kind, providing a unique tool to marry technical education with the community-service mission of the university. The program developed and lessons learned through the four years of that grant activity were previously detailed in another publication. Since that first grant was implemented, two more such grants have been awarded which have allowed the program at Gannon University to continue and evolve. The second four-year grant award period has been completed, and the most recent grant activity is in the midst of its first year. In the current paper, the authors describe lessons taken from the first grant activity, responsive changes made in the second grant activity, further lessons taken from that second grant and proposed responses to be incorporated in the current iteration of the grant. Topics of this paper include additional features which have been implemented in order to foster better diversity in the program, observations about student motivation as a result of grant activities, thoughts on how to increase interdisciplinarity of projects, how to better and more effectively interact with “clients,” lessons taken about assessment of student progress (along with warning signs of imminent trouble) and planned actions to improve student success outcomes. 
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