Annual Report 2024-2025
Director Programs Director
Lewis Wheaton, Ph.D.
LeaMarzo,Ph.D.
C-PIES Annual Report 2024-25
Overall Goals
The Center for Programs to Increase Engagement in the Sciences (C-PIES) reflects a milestone in the College of Science’s long-standing efforts to enhance the work and community ofthe college. C-PIES seeks to recruit, support, and retain staff, faculty, and students while working to build a strong communitythat broadens access to science and mathematics, while creating opportunities for advancement.
Through our initiatives and programming, C-PIES seeks to enhance the overall culture ofour College community and support the needs of all its constituent groups. Below, we will highlight the core initiatives, specific events, funding, and connected activities.
Core Initiatives over the past two years:
Student Learning and Classroom Culture
A goal for the College of Sciences is to promote learning opportunities for all students to help support student success. In 2024-25, we are supporting a project focused on broadening educational content in STEM classrooms through providing content for centering the contributions ofscientists inchemistry, neuroscience, and psychology classroom.
Transfer Student Support
In Fall2024, C-PIES launched the Student Transfer Enrichment Program (STEP) thanks to the generous support of the College ofSciences Advisory Board. This program serves as amentoring and tutoring program for students in the College. All transfer students were invited to take part in mentoring withother transfer and upper-class students along with tutoring in core mathand science coursework during their first year. We taught two sections of GT2000 for STEP students with 50 students in total participating. Students participated in communitybuilding, mentoring, and tutoring activities throughout the year.
STEPCohort 2024 Majors
Support forResearch Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Students
Since 1989, the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech has hosted undergraduate students in summer programs sponsored by the National Science Foundation – Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. Last year, these programs included Aquatic Chemical Ecology, Physics, Mathematics, and Human Neuroscience. In2024, we hosted a graduate recruitment fair with all CoS schools sharing information and answering questions about graduate studies at GeorgiaTechand funding opportunities. These have been attended byall REU students each year.
Student recruitment and support
Within CoS, we have a growing graduate student population. In 2024, C-PIES attended the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) and Society for Advancing Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS)as a vendor to meet with prospective students and discuss opportunities for graduate education at Georgia Tech. We were accompanied by CoS doctoral students who were able to fully engage in mentorship during the conference. This resulted in hundreds of contacts which have received communication from C-PIES throughout the academic year.
C-PIES Summer Research Experience Awards – this competitive award is given to students that have unique opportunities to engage in research activities unfunded in their present lab. Through an applicationprocess, we have funded exciting researchopportunities for CoS students. The 2024-25 awardees are listed below.
Name
Bin Bai
Earth& Atmospheric Sciences
Bruno Di Geronimo Chem & BioChem
Claire Elbon Earth& Atmospheric Sciences
Madison Hales Physics
Katherine Slenker Biological Sciences
Tianyu Wang Physics
Omar Zeid Psychology
Gabriella Chelbi Biological Sciences
Dru-Ann Harris Earth& Atmospheric Sciences Arshay Grant Biological Sciences
Luisa Lopera
Isabelle Osuna
Earth& Atmospheric Sciences Shreya Kothari Biological Sciences
Earth& Atmospheric Sciences
Kiera Tran Earth& Atmospheric Sciences
Pathbreakers Fellows Program – this Georgia Tech effort provides doctoral students with $10,000 in living expenses, mentoring, and peer support. The College ofSciences was new to this program in 2023-24. Our 2024 class was Marissa Izykowicz and Tatiana Gibson. Congratulations to these scholars!
GradSTEP – with generous support from the Office ofGraduate Studies, we launched the Graduate STudent Enrichment Program to engage graduate students within CoS to develop proposals on how best to facilitate learning and engagement within the schools. We funded four student-led teams insupport ofgraduate teaching and learning.
C-PIES Undergraduate Supplemental Travel Award – focuses on awarding $500 in matching supplemental funding for travel for students awarded a Presidential Undergraduate Research Award (PURA)travel grant. This award is opento all CoS students.
Congrats to our undergrads Maia Barrow in Biological Sciences Xi Ying in Chemistry andBiochemistry!
Marrissa Izykowicz
Tatiana Gibson
New Initiatives in 2024-2025:
External academic partnerships, thought leadership, inclusive faculty hiring, external funding
External academic partnerships: there are opportunities to identifyways that C-PIES can help facilitate academic partnerships, notablywith other universities to support broadening the inclusive nature ofour academic programs. Driven bythe development of two grants withSpelman College, we have been able to identifya possible pathway to grow arelationship with CoS throughthe development of new academic programs, notably aB.S./M.S. in our existing M.S. programs. Working with CoS leadership, we will be pursuing mechanisms to build astronger bridge between CoS and Spelman, and other universities in the Atlanta metro area where there is natural alignment.
Thought leadership: the initiatives we have been pursuing (CARE, researchawards, C-PIES/HHMI, STEP) have provided outcomes that can be evaluated for reporting. This provides the opportunity to serve as a thought leader by publishing outcomes ofthese programs in meeting the needs ofthe community. We have begun producing research outputs to describe the work and enhance the impact ofC-PIES.
Faculty hiring: in the first two years ofC-PIES, we focused efforts on supporting the needs offaculty searches throughencouraging best practices. However, there is a need to give more focus to this effort as it has not yielded the needed change. To that end, C-PIES is leading a CoS working group to ensure fair faculty hiring process. Over the 2024-25 academic year, this working group (composed of senior faculty from eachSchool in CoS and the Rising Tide director)held discussions anchored around innovative best practices that will support equitable facultyhiring across all Schools. The final report outlines four recommended best practices.
Goals in theYear Ahead:
C-PIES has positioned itselfas a trusted leader and collaborator supporting inclusive excellence in CoS. The intentional engagement withthe CoS community over the past three years has supported organic efforts that allow us to engage in more new and sustainable initiatives. In addition to our ongoing activities, we aim to focus on four areas in 2025-26:
Growth of STEP – at present, we are able to anticipate another two years of operationofSTEP using philanthropic funds from the CoS Advisory Board. However, student engagement with STEP and our transfer population will continue to grow. We want to be able to support as manystudents as possible and focused on long-term planning for the future of STEP to ensure its success.
Student Ambassadors – we are inspired by the engagement of our students with C-PIES and look forward to engaging our students ina more formal capacity. At present, we are focused on developing a fellowship opportunitythanks to the generous support ofGoogle. This fellowship program has the opportunityto support leadership development in our students and engage with them on building community.
Community service – we want to consider ways C-PIES can support CoS efforts to give back to the local area. There are ample opportunities to volunteer withinthe area, and we are working withthe city of Atlanta on identifying possible service projects for spring 2026.
Managing Uncertainties
-Continuedclimate: there are continued concerns within allconstituent groups within CoS about the future of federal funding, opportunities for international students, and other related concerns. These are impacting many inour community but present an opportunityfor us to connect with more people and work to find solutions that can support continued and increased engagement in the sciences.
-Travel and vendor costs: a major focus for C-PIES has been to engage inactive recruiting efforts for CoS. These have led to numerous contacts that we communicate with regularly. While last FY focused on ABRCMS and SACNAS we would like to entertainadding aconference that highlights more engagement opportunities while considering costs of exhibits.
Gift Opportunities:
Please consider supporting thework of C-PIES!
https://www.givecampus.com/campaigns/46972/donations/new
-Under designation, select the “Collegeof Sciences: StudentAccess Fund”
$5,000 – provides onegraduate student funding under theC-PIESgraduatefellows program.
$10,000 – provides oneyear of funding for 10 graduatestudents or post-doctoral fellows for theC-PIESSummer Research ExperienceAward.
$10,000 – Supports undergraduatestudents in a CoSsummer research program for one year.
$27,500 – supports oneDean’s Doctoral Fellow for 5 years.
Visit our websiteat cpies.cos.gatech.edu to learn more about our upcoming events and programs!
cpies.cos.gatech.edu