New Consortium to Support Engineering Education

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Mike Norton, executive director of the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development District; Alan Mantooth, Distinguished Professor; and state Rep. Charlie Collins.

On Tuesday, May 7, Alan Mantooth, Distinguished Professor of electrical engineering, received a check in the amount of $10,000 from the Arkansas State Legislature and the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development District. The check was presented by state Rep. Charlie Collins. These funds will support the Arkansas Energy Consortium, a group of academic and industry leaders who share a goal of addressing the shortage of engineers in the power electronics and energy fields.

“There’s no question about it, in the energy sector, and electrical energy in particular, there is a big gap forming of engineering talent,” said Mantooth. “As a nation, we have to produce more engineers for this sector, and that’s one of the things we’re looking at as part of our mission here.”

The Arkansas Energy Consortium, a collaboration among the University of Arkansas, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Arkansas State University, will encourage students to earn degrees in these fields by providing undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships and faculty start-up packages.

“I’m very excited to know we’ve got this great opportunity here,” said Collins. “The consortium that Alan and others are putting together has a focus on producing the thousand electrical engineers that we’re going to need every year into jobs that support our power grid.”

These initial funds will be distributed among the three partner schools in the form of scholarships, and Collins expressed his hope to continue to support the Arkansas Energy Consortium. Mantooth explained that the next steps for the consortium will be to establish a board of directors, which will be composed of academic and industry leaders.

“This consortium will benefit our university, our partner universities, the state of Arkansas and the field of electrical engineering in general,” said Terry Martin, interim dean of the College of Engineering.

Mantooth also emphasized the positive effect the consortium would have on the local economy. “This makes a big difference, “ he said. “We can attract people to this field and begin to get the message out that there are great jobs right in the state of Arkansas.”