5 Ways Colleges Are Reshaping STEM Education

Getting more students into science, technology, engineering and mathematics has long been a higher education priority, but access alone doesn’t guarantee success.

Recent efforts show colleges rethinking how they support students across the STEM pathway—from redesigning gateway math courses and expanding hands-on learning to strengthening career preparation and creating new avenues into technology careers.

Here are five approaches institutions are taking to help students succeed in STEM as advances in technology and a changing workforce reshape what they need from higher education.

1. Make calculus less of a bottleneck.

Calculus has long been one of the biggest hurdles for students pursuing a STEM degree, with success in Calculus I often determining whether they continue in their field—or switch to something else.

To reduce that barrier, the nonprofit Every Learner Everywhere recently launched the Courseware Lighthouse Implementation Program, an initiative that brings together 12 public colleges and universities to redesign how Calculus I and II are taught.

Rather than introduce a new technology tool into individual classrooms, the initiative works with entire mathematics departments to rethink course design, strengthen faculty collaboration and use student performance data to refine instruction over time. The program follows a six-phase framework that guides departments through planning, implementation and ongoing evaluation, with the goal of improving student success in gateway math courses and helping more students persist in STEM majors.

Laura DaVinci, senior director of Every Learner Everywhere, said improving student outcomes in calculus involves more than adopting new technology; it requires rethinking how institutions support students and faculty throughout gateway math courses.

“It has to do a lot with the students’ perception that calculus is difficult,” DaVinci said. “When they go in with that anxiety and that, ‘Oh no, I know for a fact that only two-thirds of students ever pass calculus,’ it’s really daunting to go in wondering, ‘Am I going to be the student that fails?’”

2. Connect calculus to real-world engineering.

First offered at the University of Michigan in 2024, ROB 201: Calculus for the Modern Engineer was designed to more closely connect calculus with the work students will encounter as engineers, combining elements of Calculus I and II and differential equations with programming and robotics applications.

Jessy Grizzle, a professor of robotics at Michigan who developed the course, said the idea grew in part from years of hearing students describe a disconnect between the math they were learning and how they expected to use it as engineers.

Rather than beginning with differentiation—as traditional calculus courses typically do—students start with integration, using, for example, real data to calculate a drone’s trajectory from its acceleration. The course also pairs traditional pencil-and-paper calculus exercises that have exact solutions with messier, real-world problems that students rely on computer programming to solve.

Students learn to code in Julia, allowing them to use computation when a neat solution isn’t possible. Grizzle said the approach exposes students earlier to the kinds of challenges they will encounter as engineers, where data can be noisy and solutions less straightforward.

“I kept hearing from students that they felt beat down in the math department and unmotivated by just learning abstract concepts without them being tied to applications,” Grizzle said. “People become engineers because they want to create devices that we all hope improve the world.”

“So when the math seems completely divorced from that, there’s a segment of students who are flat out turned off by that,” he added. “They really need it tied to something more substantial, more concrete.”

3. Prepare computer science students for a changing field.

After a decade-long computer science boom, the City University of New York is confronting questions about whether it has enough instructional capacity—and the right expertise—to prepare students for a rapidly changing technology workforce.

A recent report from the Center for an Urban Future found that computer science enrollment at CUNY surged by 146 percent from 2014 to 2024, even as overall university enrollment declined. Faculty growth failed to keep pace with that expansion, however, creating potential bottlenecks for students trying to build careers in technology.

Those challenges arise as the technology sector itself is shifting. Numbers of entry-level tech jobs in New York City have fallen by 49 percent since 2022, while AI is changing the skills employers expect from new graduates. CUNY computer science enrollment also fell 15 percent between 2024 and 2025, from 10,330 to 8,819 students.

Eli Dvorkin, editorial and policy director at the Center for an Urban Future, said the combination of CUNY’s decade of enrollment growth and the fast-evolving tech economy has increased pressure to ensure that students have access to faculty with the capacity and expertise to prepare them for the workforce.

“Just a few years ago, a computer science degree alone could take a student pretty far,” Dvorkin said. “But in today’s much tougher entry-level job market, students need more applied skills, exposure to AI in context, real-world projects, industry connections and faculty who have the insights to help them connect to careers and enough time to mentor them.”

“That all raises the stakes enormously for getting the faculty piece right when it comes to computer science education,” he added.

4. Make AI learning more accessible.

This spring Santa Clara University launched AI Kitchen, a weekly workshop where students, faculty, staff and Silicon Valley professionals gather to experiment with emerging artificial intelligence tools.

Every Friday, about 50 participants meet for a nearly four-hour session to test new AI tools and explore how they’re used across fields ranging from medicine and marketing to education and real estate.

Kai Lukoff, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Santa Clara, said the “AI Kitchen” name was chosen intentionally to signal a space that is more familiar, communal and creative than one associated with stereotypical tech culture.

To reinforce that accessibility, every session is intentionally kept “code-light,” allowing an anthropology major, a computer science student and a curious staff member to participate in the same hands-on exercises.

“What I wanted to start with AI Kitchen is not just a course about AI literacy, but what one might call AI fluency,” Lukoff said. “So not just having an understanding of the tools, but also hands-on ability to work with these tools, explore their strengths and weaknesses, and engage in real-world projects that apply them.”

5. Open new pathways into tech careers.

Marymount University’s From Caregiver to Breadwinner program is based on the premise that caregiving develops skills employers value but often overlook. The private Catholic university in Northern Virginia launched the workforce initiative in 2024 to help unpaid family caregivers transition into careers in information technology.

Through the no-cost, 12-week program, participants receive training in IT and artificial intelligence fundamentals, prepare for industry-recognized certifications, including CompTIA Tech+, and receive mentorship, career coaching and job-placement support. Established by the university’s Center for the Innovative Workforce, the program has served more than 140 participants so far.

Diane Murphy, director of the Center for the Innovative Workforce, said the idea emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when caregiving responsibilities pushed many people—particularly women—out of the workforce. As technology reshaped the job market and employers sought new digital skills, many caregivers faced challenges returning to work.

“We felt this was a needy population that nobody was really paying too much attention to,” Murphy said. “But if we’ve got a tech workforce crunch, they are people who already have good skills, particularly customer service skills, which are a little low in IT help desk work.”

“If we could take their existing skills and package them with some technology training, we could get them to reinvent themselves into the tech workforce,” she added.

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