Herman Locklear, left, Christopher Clark, Lisa Hunt, James Freeman, Patrick Jacques, Loretta Allen, Michael Jacobs, RCC President Melissa Singler, and state Rep. Charles Graham met Monday to celebrate a $185,000 U.S. Department of Defense grant to help connect STEM students to technology internships. Maureen Metzger | Robeson Community College

Herman Locklear, left, Christopher Clark, Lisa Hunt, James Freeman, Patrick Jacques, Loretta Allen, Michael Jacobs, RCC President Melissa Singler, and state Rep. Charles Graham met Monday to celebrate a $185,000 U.S. Department of Defense grant to help connect STEM students to technology internships.

Maureen Metzger | Robeson Community College

<p>Singler</p>

Singler

LUMBERTON — A new partnership is giving Robeson County students firsthand experience in the STEM fields that will supplement the future of defense.

The Defense Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics Education Consortium, supported by the U.S. Department of Defense, recently selected Robeson Community College to be included in its Innovation Bloc Funding for 2021. With the help of an $185,000 grant, RCC, along with Emerging Technology Institute and the Public Schools of Robeson County, will collaborate to aid the DOD’s efforts to strengthen career pathways among military-connected students and groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM, by aligning students into internship paths that could lead to careers in the defense field.

The partners met Monday afternoon to celebrate the collaboration.

“This is a fundamental milestone for the community college and the community to showcase that we have the talent here in our area and the educators to supply what the next service members are going to look like for the Department of Defense,” said James Freeman, founder and president of the Emerging Technology Institute.

Freeman said the future of defense is not soldiers that “operate a gun and goes into battle.”

“It’s going to be a young person who has a science, engineering, mathematics background that’s going to do cyber, that’s going to do spectrum analysis, that’s going to do coding and hacking,” Freeman said. “The amazing thing is that this college and the Public Schools of Robeson County are already producing those type of students.”

There are slots for four students — two from RCC and two from PSRC — to participate in the program over the course of six months. Three already have been selected and will work a total of 160 hours in a paid internship with industry professionals that are working on a project with the Special Operations Command, Freeman said.

“That’s important because once the project gets to Phase 3, they can be hired on,” Freeman said.

There are requirements for students to participate in the program.

“We look at the classes they’ve taken prior to and we go based on what credentials they have,” said Michael Jacobs, an RCC Information Technology instructor.

As part of the program a technology fair and a workforce recruitment fair will be held, and a cyber lab will be built.

“The collaboration we’re talking about today is about STEM education,” state Rep. Charles Graham said. “We’re talking about giving students the opportunity to explore and work in an environment that will give them the tools. This kind of collaboration between the public schools and community college and with a provider here with private industry is very futuristic. It’s something that we need to continue to pursue and continue to fund.”

Robeson County is in a strategic location close to Fort. Bragg, Graham said .

“[W]e have the students,” he said. “We have to resource our children to be able to go into these internships and have the prerequisite skills to do that.”

The program is “futuristic but its now,” RCC President Melissa Singler said.

“This is the wave of the future not just for the Department of Defense, but you think about business and industry and the world that we live in. I think the pandemic has proven that we are existing in a virtual environment,” Singler said.

The college is excited about where the collaboration will lead, she said.

“This is not the end of a project,” Singler said. “This is the beginning of many more.”

Tomeka Sinclair can be reached at [email protected] or 910-416-5865.