The S-STEM program is a year-long program for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) majors. An S-STEM student completes a project or conducts advanced work in an area that is supervised by a faculty member. In order to participate, the student must be a STEM major, be enrolled full-time, be a US citizen or permanent resident, have at least a 3.0 gpa (or a 2.5 in some cases) and be in financial need. Should the student finish the project successfully, the student receives a stipend of $1500 at the end of the year.
Prof. Abdramane Serme is currently the math department liaison for the S-STEM program. Students who are interested in participating in the program but who do not yet have a mentor, or faculty who are interested in mentoring students but who do not yet have a student to mentor, may contact Prof. Serme, and he will try to match students with faculty.
To Qualify:
To qualify for the program, a student must:
- be enrolled as a major in the departments of Science, CIS, or Mathematics;
- be enrolled as a full-time student;
- be a U.S. citizen, U.S. National, Permanent Resident, or an Alien admitted as a refugee;
- have and maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher (or a GPA of 2.5 or higher, if the STEM mentor is willing to write a letter stating that “that the mentor believes that the student is capable of doing an extra curriculum research project and that the student will benefit from the experience”); and
- be in financial need (eligible for US Dept. of Education PELL grant).
A student applying for S-STEM scholarship will be disqualified if he/she has already another BMCC scholarship.
To obtain a copy of the S-STEM application, contact Dr. Abdramane Serme.
Upon successful completion of the project at the end of the semester, the student must write up a summary of research progress; the student will then receive a stipend of $1500.
Deadlines:
Applications are typically due by the end of September (or a few days earlier) in the fall and by the beginning of March in the spring.
The application/contract requires:
- a faculty mentor to serve as the student’s project advisor;
- a description of the student’s reasons for pursing a STEM major;
- the signature of the student and the faculty mentor; and
- the approval of the S-STEM committee.Once the S-STEM Committee has made a decision, both the student and the faculty mentor will be notified, usually via email.
Samples of Past S-STEM Student Projects:
- Jiayu Chen (with Dr. Yibao Xu), Notes on the Development of the Calculus
- Michael Cunha (with Dr. Claire Wladis), Logic and Logic Circuits
- Xiaoqing Ding (with Dr. Marcos Zyman), Methods of proof in algebra and number theory
- Umme Ferdousi (with Dr. Yibao Xu), Archimedes and Ancient Indian Mathematics: A Preliminary Comparison on the Methods of Finding Areas and Volumes.
- Anthony Johnson (with Dr. Yibao Xu), Cartography: Historical and Personal Perspectives
- Owen O’Leary (with Dr. Claire Wladis), Number Theory and Applications to Cryptography
- Ping Qiu (with Dr. Felix Apfaltrer), On numerical calculation of the non-elementary error function
- Bingchun Weng (with Dr. Felix Apfaltrer), On the nonintegrated of the error function
- Shengen Zhang (with Dr. Claire Wladis), Group Theory and its Applications
Faculty who have mentored an S-STEM student:
In the math department, the following faculty have mentored S-STEM students in the past:
- Felix Apfaltrer
- Chokri Cherif
- Avraham Goldstein
- Claire Wladis
- Yibao Xu