ESTEEM is a scholarship and support program for academically-talented, low-income students majoring in or intending to major in Engineering. Led by UC Santa Barbara's College of Engineering, the program is a partnership with UC Santa Barbara's Gevirtz Graduate School of Education and four regional California Community Colleges (CCCs): Allan Hancock College, Oxnard College, Santa Barbara City College, and Ventura College. All five participating institutions are Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and are committed to facilitating transfer of students between community college and four-year universities.
The goals of the ESTEEM project are:
- To promote the success of academically-talented, low-income students at UC Santa Barbara and four regional CCCs, and facilitate transfers into Engineering B.S. programs;
- To identify barriers to transfer and investigate the effectiveness of targeted strategies to minimize them;
- To accelerate the adaptation of transfer and non-transfer students to the upper-division curriculum and integration into university culture; and
- To initiate faculty collaborations between UC Santa Barbara and regional CCCs to improve transfer student preparation.
The five-year ESTEEM program (2016-2021) will provide $580,000 in scholarships per year for students enrolled at one of the five participating institutions. CCC students who receive an ESTEEM scholarship and subsequently transfer to UC Santa Barbara's College of Engineering will retain their scholarship for their Junior and Senior years, as long as they maintain their eligibility for the program. ESTEEM also provides nearly $280,000 a year for student support services, activities, and research.