Supporting economically disadvantaged students from Nicaragua in STEM-C fields

Even students who are provided with currently best available education in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (STEM-C) fields are having problems coping with living in the modern world where technological advancements happen on a daily basis, let alone students coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. In a world where institutions offering formal education have to collaborate with individuals and groups of people interested in providing informal education, it is of a vital importance to set up good examples and share them with communities that are less experienced. In this paper we present how Student Research Development Center's (SRDC) best practices of establishing a pre-college pipeline for young economically disadvantage minority students, who are interested in STEM-C fields, from Puerto Rico are being transferred to Universidad Catolica de Nicaragua (UNICA). The goal of the paper is to show how we developed a partnership between Puerto Rico and Nicaragua, and used lessons learned in Puerto Rico to involve undergraduate and pre-college students from Nicaragua in research program using project based learning in STEM-C fields.