What Is The Louis Stokes Midwest Center Of Excellence (LSMCE)?

The Louis Stokes Midwest Center of Excellence (LSMCE) was created in 2012 to communicate best practices, tools, and information garnered from the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) consortium to a broader audience.
LSMCE will serve as a national hub of information for scholars to access data, models, and funding opportunities in broadening participation of underrepresented minority (URM) students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Additionally, the Center will begin assisting 28 Midwestern non-LSAMP schools with developing strategies to improve their URM students’ performance, persistence and success in STEM degree programs and provide opportunities for their faculty and students to participate in STEM activities including workshops/conferences, webinars and research internships.

Who Are The Lead Institutions In The LSMCE?

• Chicago State University (CSU): CSU has served as the lead institution for the Illinois LSAMP program since 1993. The Alliance is currently composed of eight comprehensive universities, one senior institution, five community colleges and one federal laboratory.
• Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI): IUPUI has been an active partner institution of LSAMP Indiana since 2002. LSAMP Indiana is an alliance of eight Indiana universities that are well situated in the state’s chief population centers.
• Argonne National Laboratory (ANL): ANL is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's oldest and largest national laboratories for science and engineering research, and has hosted 165 Illinois LSAMP faculty and students at its facility in Argonne, IL, over the past 10 years.

What Is The Purpose Of The LSMCE?

The Center activities will be concentrated in areas of information dissemination and outreach. Its goal is to strengthen the recruitment and retention of URM students through mentoring and providing support to ease the transitional challenges at critical educational junctures. It also aims to help URM students move forward to degree completion and career advancement in STEM fields. This will be done in three ways.

• Taking a leadership role to articulate the national critical need for broadening minority participation and success in STEM undergraduate programs.
• Developing an information hub that provides consistent on-line resources and sustained opportunities to show case best practices in STEM teaching/learning and to support URM students’ persistence and engagement through research and internship experiences.
• Establishing the LSMCE hub to disseminate information and create networks of support for non-LSAMP students.

LSMCE SCHEMA