NSF Grant Will Provide Interdisciplinary Scholarships for Science and Engineering Students

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.