About

About SAGE

The Program

SAGE is a bold initiative to reimagine how Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education is taught, experienced, and championed at community-based institutions serving rural populations.

At its core, SAGE addresses a pressing challenge: too many students from rural communities face significant achievement gaps in STEM fields. These gaps widened dramatically in the wake of COVID-19's outsized impact on college readiness. SAGE plans to address this problem through institutional culture change and innovative, experiential learning. SAGE will address institutional culture by aligning leadership, faculty, and administrators around a shared STEM vision through structured dialogue, targeted professional development, and meaningful engagement in student-centered learning. SAGE will also transform the student experience by building genuine STEM identities that give them the confidence and belonging to persist, excel, and lead. The goal of SAGE is to develop a replicable, evidence-based model that shows the rest of the country what's possible when a community institution fully commits to its students' futures in the global STEM workforce.

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Program Objectives

1) Enhance STEM identity in institutional leadership to transform student support networks.

We work with HU leadership, faculty, and staff to build a campus-wide culture that recognizes and supports STEM students at every level. This means making STEM feel like a real possibility for every student who walks through our doors.

2) Develop innovative experiential learning opportunities across STEM disciplines.

Students need more than coursework. They need hands-on research, mentorship, and connections to real STEM careers. SAGE builds that pipeline from the first semester through graduation, and gives students the skills, confidence, and networks to move into graduate programs and the modern STEM workforce.

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Our Community

Heritage University (HU), a community-focused Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and Native American Serving Non-Tribal Institution (NASNTI), serves the educational needs of rural, south-central Washington State, preparing our future Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce for regional economic development and land stewardship. HU is located on the ancestral lands of the Yakama Nation and within the boundaries of their modern-day reservation.

Yakima County is one of top agricultural regions of the United States, and the leading county in Washington State for many high-value crops. Farmworkers and their families largely transitioned from migrant workers to permanent community members over the many decades, and Yakima County is now majority Hispanic (52%; U.S. Census Bureau, 2021). Yakima County is considered an economically challenged region, with one of Washington State’s lowest per capita incomes ($25,000) and persistently low rates of persons with a Bachelor’s degree or higher (17.8%). HU enrollment largely mirrors the K-12 population demographics in the region, with 72% Hispanic and 10% Indigenous students (here we refer to American Indian/Alaska Native students as indigenous). It is important to recognize that when we speak of the HU student, we are more often than not referring to women with a student body of 77% women. In addition, 63% of HU students are low-income (Pell Grant eligible) and 80% are first-generation.


The SAGE Program is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF-HSI Program Award Number 2449985).