Stanford makes community college connections

Isabel Caballero Texeira, a De Anza College student studying biology, said she was “terrified-excited” when she was selected last spring for an internship through the Neuroscience Undergraduate Research Opportunity (NeURO) program at Stanford’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. “I was just not very confident,” she said. She considered not attending.

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But as the end of the program approached, her courses and work with neurology Assistant Professor Paul George nearly complete, Caballero Teixeira described the summer as a success. “The classes provided by the NeURO program really have helped me to be able to digest the information. It’s very, very empowering,” she said as she bent over trays of cells in the School of Medicine Lab Surge Building, filling a pipette with media in order to maintain cells that are used in stroke research.

Her experience is part of a growing set of collaborations between Stanford University and the region’s many community colleges that provide unique academic experiences for community college students. Such programs reflect Stanford’s commitment to ensuring equity and inclusion in research and on campus, and to engaging with partners to learn from and give back to the local community.

Experiencing a top research institution

Nearly 30 offices across Stanford now have programs for community college students to participate in research and education opportunities. From the social sciences to neuroscience, from humanities to nanotechnology and beyond, units at Stanford are connecting with community colleges to illuminate academic paths that students might not have glimpsed before.

“I’m really interested in law and how it can be applied,” said Molara Mabogunje, a Foothill College student who wanted to learn how digital science is applied to the humanities. This summer she worked on Stanford Libraries’ KNOW Systemic Racism project to learn digital humanities skills such as research design, data analysis, and digital publication strategies via the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). “Policy is very important to me, and seeing how systemic racism is woven into law.”

Some programs have been operating for several years, started by professors as part of the demonstration of broader impact required by research grants from institutions such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Others are newer and reflect part of Stanford’s IDEAL initiative to create an inclusive, accessible, diverse, and equitable university for all community members.

The work of creating the outreach or “broader impact” part of a grant application is increasingly aided by Stanford’s Office of STEM Outreach (OSO). Led by Kyle Cole, OSO functions as a matchmaker connecting Stanford researchers working on grant applications with external STEM educational organizations.

Cole’s familiarity with the workings of the existing programs at Stanford, his knowledge of internship and mentoring best practices, and his connections with community colleges and other external STEM organizations allow him to identify the best opportunities for collaboration.

“OSO works closely with local community colleges for mutual exchange and benefit,” Cole said. “Through these partnerships, community college students receive hands-on lab experience that helps them envision a future in STEM, while Stanford faculty and students gain valuable mentoring and teaching opportunities as they advance their research and contribute to diversifying STEM fields.”

A new community of practice

In April 2022, Stanford’s Office of Community Engagement (OCE) and OSO created a new community of practice, bringing together faculty, graduate students, postdocs, and staff who work with community college programs and students. The formation of the group facilitates idea exchange, more coordinated planning, and shared problem-solving. One of the newest programs, known as the Community College Outreach Program in developmental biology, was started two years ago by Stanford graduate students Teni Anbarchian and Wendy Wenderski, who wished for research experiences and guidance when they were community college students.

“Hands-on research is probably the highest impact experience students can have to help them succeed in STEM education and careers,” Cole said. The collaborations are also welcomed by community college students outside of STEM fields who otherwise wouldn’t see how research is conducted before they reach four-year universities, said Leo Kim, a Foothill College computer science and psychology major.

“I didn’t even know qualitative coding existed,” said Kim, who was an intern at the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS) at Stanford. Immersing himself in learning it at the start of his eight-week internship, he said, made it possible to execute more complex work under the direction of Preeti Srinivasan, a PhD student in organizational behavior.

In 2022, OCE awarded a combined $128,000 in engagement funding to four programs that offer community college students internships with Stanford graduate students. The programs prioritize local students who are the first generation in their families to go to college, those who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and those from communities that are historically underrepresented in the fields the programs cover.

OSO has also worked to identify other funding streams, including state-supported programs such as MESA, which supports underrepresented students in STEM, and LAEP, which offers students opportunities to be paid for activities that are aligned with their studies. OSO also tries to raise awareness in departments that allocating money for student stipends is a valuable investment in diversity goals.

For Caballero Texeira, who had postponed college for five years to help support her family and who went back to school just as the COVID pandemic unfolded, her internship showed her a pathway to postdoctoral work, if she chooses.

“Now that I have the basics and fundamentals instilled in me, I’m able to take that insecurity, take that side of me that didn’t think I could do it – didn’t even think I belonged – and completely change the narrative. And I am immensely proud,” Caballero Texeira said.