History of Department

This program was started as part of a National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) grant to enhance the academic engagement and learning experiences of undergraduate STEM majors. This grant, the Peer Enhanced Experiential Research in STEM (PEERS) project, involved five programs: Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Science, Mathematics, and Physics.It began in October 2014 and by October 2019, it had successfully implemented a sustainable, tiered community of learners, peer-leaders, and STEM faculty. There were challenges to implementing this program, such as securing sustainable funding for peer leaders, creating consistent materials to be distributed and shared to faculty, training peer leaders and faculty on best practices for peer leading, and of course, scheduling! However, departmental support for this program and a commitment among faculty and students enabled the team working on this to overcome all of these obstacles and to succeed.