FAYETTEVILLE,
Ark. — University
of Arkansas science and engineering
students will benefit from about $850,000 in funding over five years for
scholarships as part of a national program to increase the number of highly
trained scientists in the workforce.
The grant of
$599,779 from the National Science Foundation and approximately $250,000 from
the University of Arkansas
will fund undergraduate and graduate scholarships in microelectronics-photonics
(microEP), while also providing funds to the recipients for travel to
professional meetings. Scholarships will be awarded to students who demonstrate
financial need, with a focus on students from traditionally underrepresented
groups in the sciences and engineering, including women and minority students,
said Ken Vickers, program director and principal investigator for the grant.
Recipients must be U.S.
citizens or permanent residents.
Over the course
of the grant, the one-year Scholarships for Science, Technology, Engineering
and Mathematics will be awarded to about 33 graduate students, 20 undergraduate
students during the academic year and eight summer undergraduate students.
The graduate scholarships
will be about $10,000 apiece, in addition to those scholars’ tuition being paid
from the matching University of Arkansas
grant from the Graduate School.
These scholarships are primarily for students entering the microEP graduate
program in their first year, Vickers said.
“We see this as
seed money, as launching money,” Vickers said. “We expect the microEP students
to be entrepreneurial.”
The undergraduate
scholarships will average about $7,150 during the academic year and $2,400 in
the summer, and will be offered to students who decide to participate in the
new microEP undergraduate minor launched this fall semester.
Vickers and
co-principal investigators Leonard Schaper, professor of electrical
engineering, and Lin Oliver, professor of physics, will manage the program and
mentor students.
The university
will be looking for students from Arkansas and the region and will be able to
recruit from several summer undergraduate research programs already sponsored
on campus, such as the Carver Project hosted by the Graduate School and the NSF
Research Experience for Undergraduates programs hosted by the chemistry, physics,
mechanical engineering and microEP programs.
The microEP
program, originally launched in 1998, includes professors across many disciplines
in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the College
of Engineering. Students in the
program participate in interdisciplinary team research projects that teach them
to work in teams as well as to perform traditional science and engineering
research. In addition to in-depth research in micro- and nanoscale materials,
processing and devices, students learn how to perform as a natural work group
on projects, how to present research and how to apply what they are doing to a
business model designed to commercialize their research for the good of
society.
“We are providing
more options for students to create customized curricula to support their
career goals in these areas,” Vickers said, “while also giving them the
industrial management and entrepreneurial skills they will need to efficiently
and effectively use their knowledge as they start their first professional
jobs.”
Graduates from
the program have gone on to jobs at Intel, Texas Instruments, Northrop-Grumman
and Entergy Arkansas, as well as
professorships at universities across the nation. In addition, students have
gone on to join local technology-based start-up companies founded on the
results of their graduate research.
The University
of Arkansas is gaining a reputation
as a place where semiconductor and nanotechnology companies can find
well-trained graduates from both microEP and the university’s traditional
science and engineering programs, Vickers said, with credit for microEP’s
success going to the colleges for their strong support and excellent research
facilities.
“Having facilities like the High-Density
Electronics Center is crucial to recruiting students to our campus,” he said.
“Students get hands-on experience in operating semiconductor manufacturing
grade equipment in that environment” — something they are unlikely to get
elsewhere.
“This grant will
help create more opportunities for students, and ultimately it will bring more
economic development to Arkansas,”
he said.