University of Tennessee College of Engineering Receives $2 Million NSF Grant for Retention Programs
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.–The University of Tennessee College of Engineering has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program (STEP) Grant.
The goal of the NSF STEP program is to increase the number of U.S. students receiving degrees in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The proposed program, Research and Instructional Strategies for Engineering Retention (RISER), will receive $2 million over five years to promote the retention of engineering students.
In developing the grant proposal, the primary investigators (PIs), along with a Proposal Development Team (PDT) from the Office of Research, reviewed data on students leaving the engineering college without graduating and targeted two main groups: women in the honors program and students that were not enrolled in the Engage Engineering Fundamentals Program in the fall of their freshmen year.
The former group generally left the college to pursue majors in health related areas. The program will address these students by offering funded undergraduate research assistantships either at UTK or Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
The RISER program addresses the latter group by creating an entirely new branch of the Engineering Fundamentals program with increased involvement of the COE faculty and other engineering students.
In 2010, NSF STEP reviewed 209 proposals requesting approximately eight times more funding than the anticipated $30 million available, resulting in around a 10% funding rate.
The PIs for the RISER proposal are Dr. Claudia Rawn and Dr. Veerle Keppens, faculty from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Dr. Richard Bennett, the director of the Engineering Fundamentals Division; Dr. Christopher Pionke, the director of the Engineering Honors Program; and Margaret (Margie) Russell, the director of Engineering Advising Services. Members of the PDT working with PIs were Charlie Senn, Alan Rutenberg, and David Smelser.
For more information, contact Kim Cowart, Communications Manager, Office of Engineering Communications, at (865) 974-0686/kcowart@utk.edu.