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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a five-year grant of $499,249 to the Community of Neighboring and National Entrepreneurial Centers and Trainees (CONNECT) Network, which began in 2022 with seed funding from NSF. The program aims to help Katies and students across the country in STEM fields build an entrepreneurial mindset and hone their skills as bioscience innovators.

Through these opportunities, the national network works to illuminate best practices in entrepreneurship education and provides experience in entrepreneurial thinking early in STEM-orientated students' college careers, specifically for women of color. “When we started the grant, we knew there was a need for diversity in the STEM workforce and entrepreneurship,” says Roy. According to the , the share of women and underrepresented minorities in the STEM workforce increased between 2011 and 2021 but is still low compared to men in the field; similar trends appear for BIPOC women in STEM entrepreneurial spaces.

This observation was affirmed by a survey conducted by the CONNECT Network last fall, taken by over 200 students. Their findings illuminate disparities in entrepreneurial interest, career intent, and available academic support across intersectional student identities. 

Opportunities at the intersection of science and career

With the 2022 incubator funding from NSF, Campbell and Roy “[brought] faculty to the table who are interested in helping students in these STEM courses to think of their ideas as innovations and to better understand the pathway to bringing their innovations to market,” says Campbell.

Roy shares that in the CONNECT Network’s experience today, few faculty members identify themselves as equipped with entrepreneurship skills. This second grant, he believes, will help faculty take on these roles by offering professional development and a community of practice in entrepreneurship education.

The CONNECT team is also using the second grant to continue developing networks, by augmenting the number of faculty and students outside of the University and creating hubs of networks in other states. Currently, CONNECT operates at 16 institutions in 10 states. They describe each network hub as one student lead and one faculty member “developing programs between local bioscience industry and their university.” These modules and findings are then shared between hubs to aid in establishing partnerships within other hubs. 

Shavyonne Rath ’24, KARE program grant coordinator, is a former participant in the CONNECT Network. “I was heavily exposed to opportunities that enable passionate scientists to also be entrepreneurs or enter the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem (venture capital, educational training etc.),” she says. “It challenged my previous perception of career options and capabilities from having a bioscience degree in a way that I could see the clear overlap between science and business.” Rath says her experience with CONNECT Network at the  conference helped her realize her passion for wanting to help and prepare students for their future careers in biosciences. 

Campbell will focus her sabbatical scholarship on applying for an additional NSF grant this upcoming spring, with the goal of implementing the modules developed by the CONNECT hubs into biology curriculum. “We'll propose taking the lessons learned from the network and bringing them into curricular practice,” she says. “Ideally, this network will inform curricular change in ways that enable all students to see themselves as innovators and to see entrepreneurship as a place in which they belong.”