Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships Blog

Office of Naval Research:2011 Naval STEM Forum:

Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Nevin Carr announced an incentive plan to award up to $8 million for ideas aimed at boosting K-12 education in the sciences during a June15-16 conference in Alexandria, Va.

“Today’s approaches to training and education must seek new innovative ways to sustain America’s position as a global technology leader,” Carr told the more than 650 government, academia and business leaders gathered at the Naval Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) forum.

“I wouldn’t begin to pretend that the Navy is going to solve the country’s STEM problem…there are others out there working very hard to do that,” Carr continued, “but we also want to make sure we are all intersected in a way that we can get the most out of the collective.”

The challenge is one of many efforts the Navy has developed to encourage students, parents and teachers to pursue STEM education and careers. Through its STEM initiatives, the Navy seeks to increase the talent pool of future Sailors, naval scientists and engineers.

The Navy will award up to $1.5 million to each Phase One selectee. Teams will compete to advance to Phase Two. In the second stage, up to two teams will be awarded as much as $1 million each to extend their Phase One success to a Navy training challenge for another year. The technologies will be designed to meet students’ individual learning style.

USF Sarasota-Manatee Student receives SMART Scholarship from US Dept. of Defense

Todd Mitchell, an Information Technology student at USF Sarasota-Manatee’s North Port location, will receive full tuition and fees, a stipend of $25,000 per year, a paid summer internship, and a guaranteed job after graduation.  He has accepted a civilian position with the Quantico, Virginia Marine Corps Systems Command to begin in 2012.  Marine Corps Systems Command is the Commandant of the Marine Corps’ agent for acquisition and sustainment of systems and equipment used to accomplish their war/fighting mission.

Mitchell had been in the Navy for 20 years and worked as a civilian in retail management before deciding to go back to college to get a degree in Information Technology.  He chose USFSM for its convenient North Port location and its real-world training that he knew would be applicable in the workforce.

“My family was already established in North Port, so I needed a convenient degree program option, and USF Sarasota-Manatee was exactly what I was looking for,” Mitchell said. “I liked that the IT program was actually teaching job skills that would make you employable, as opposed to business theory that doesn’t always apply in the real world.  The classwork I’ve done here is real-world stuff that I’m going to use in my career.”

Much of the real-world training that Mitchell has gotten at the university includes a specialization in Internet Security, which will be useful as he does research on cyber warfare for the Marine Corps.  He believes that his university experience and previous experience with the military helped him get the position, which was offered to only 300 of the 3,000 applicants who applied for the scholarship through the Office of National Scholarships.

The National Science Foundation has recently awarded Savannah State University with a $2 million dollar grant to provide funding for their students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields (STEM). The grant was awarded as part of the NSF Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program for the Minority Access for Graduate Education and Careers (MAGEC).

The five-year grant will continue to strengthen excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) that was established during the initial grant period by further expanding and deepening outreach, teaching and mentoring activities in three key areas: curriculum development and reform; expanded pathways for undergraduate recruitment, enrichment, retention and research experiences; and faculty development.

Grant funds will provide approximately 30 scholarships each year for qualified STEM majors, research experience at national and international (China, Malaysia and India) institutions, internship opportunities at local/regional industries and schools as well as support for faculty training in new and fast-developing research areas, teaching and learning activities.

*Related Articles:
2010 SMART Scholarship Program Now Open
WWU Receives NSF Grant to Train STEM Teachers

Western Washington University has recently been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to train people to become middle school and high school math and science teachers from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields (STEM).

The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program will provide funding as well as stipends for professionals and students in STEM fields to acquire their teaching certificate from WWU.

“Someone at Boeing in Everett, for example, or at a local engineering firm here in Bellingham who has always wanted to teach and bring their science or mathematics knowledge, expertise and experience into the classroom would be a perfect fit for one of these scholarships,” explained Bruce Larson, professor and administrator of the grant for WWU.

As part of the agreement, for each year the student accepts funding from the grant, he or she must commit to teaching in a high-need school district for at least two years.

Related: Marquette University Awarded NSF Grant to Train STEM Teachers, Colorado State University Scientists Receive NSF Grant

Tennessee Tech University recently received a federal grant from the Department of Energy worth $265,000. The purpose of the grant is to fund research for a wind power storage technology. David Wenzhong Gao, assistant professor of electrical and computing engineering, will lead the project.

The research is meant to address a major challenge of sustaining wind energy: the fact that wind does not blow consistently.

Tennessee Tech research will incorporate “plug-and-play” energy storage modules at different levels of a wind power system — the control center, wind power plant and wind turbine generator. The project will last two years, during which researchers analyze the modules in the lab, create a prototype and test them in the field at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and wind power plants. One potential demonstration site is the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Buffalo Mountain Wind Power Plant.

The DOE has currently initiated funding for 28 wind energy projects worth $14 million dollars in grants.

The National Science Foundation has recently announced that the anticipated fall deadline to apply for Research Experiences for Undergraduates proposals (REU) will be in early October. The exact deadline date will be released in the REU Program Solicitation, which will be published at least 90 days before the deadline.

The purpose of REU is to support undergraduate students pursuing research in any field supported by the NSF. According to the solicitation, there are two ways a student may be supported for their research:

(1) REU Sites are based on independent proposals to initiate and conduct projects that engage a number of students in research. REU Sites may be based in a single discipline or academic department, or on interdisciplinary or multi-department research opportunities with a coherent intellectual theme. Proposals with an international dimension are welcome. A partnership with the Department of Defense supports REU Sites in DoD-relevant research areas.

(2) REU Supplements may be requested for ongoing NSF-funded research projects or may be included as a component of proposals for new or renewal NSF grants or cooperative agreements.

In order to participate in REU activities, students must contact the REU sites directly, not through NSF. NSF has provided a list of REU sites.

*For more information on the REU proposals, please reference the archived REU Program Solicitaion.

*Students with questions in regards to choosing a REU site, may check with the following NSF REU Contacts.

The National Science Foundation has awarded scientists at Colorado State University a $2.7 million grant. This grant is meant to assist graduate students in their research to “test new theories about how cells behave using advanced engineering methods in microelectronics and electrochemistry.” The project will be lead by Tom Chen and Stuart Tobet.

As part of the grant, graduate students at Colorado State University will share their knowledge with K-12 teachers in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields (STEM). Michael A. De Miranda, professor in the College of Applied Human Sciences and co-principal investigator for the grant, has been assigned the task of training these STEM K-12 teachers.

“The grant is intended to take that impact beyond higher education classrooms into the community to be shared with K-12 teachers and industry leaders,” explains De Miranda. “We are using this money to train graduate students to not only conduct the research but obtain transferable skills such as leadership, ethics and communication.”

By encouraging the graduate students at Colorado State to work with K-12 teachers on this grant, it will improve the communication between different people within the science community and increase the number of students entering into STEM related fields in the future.

Siemens PLM Software has recently donated $150 million in grants to Howard University in Washington, D.C. The goal of the grants is to strengthen the university’s engineering department by providing “engineering software and student and instructor training and specialized certification programs.” The donation by Siemens is the largest amount Howard University has ever received and will benefit both PLM engineers and technologists.