*       "Preening Post," Rocky Mountain News

Program of the Month

The Merck Company Foundation awarded a $4 million grant to the National Alliance for Hispanic Health to establish the Alliance/Merck Ciencia Scholars Program. The program is a new partnership that will work to improve Hispanic student access to higher education and degrees in STEM.  The Alliance will work with the Merck Institute for Science Education (MISE) to select and award grants to promising Hispanic students from predominantly Hispanic communities have a history in working with the Alliance and MISE. Fifty students will receive $42,500 in college scholarships and internship support to pursue STEM degrees, and an additional 125 Hispanic college students nationwide will receive $2,000 scholarships.

 
Latest News  

Leaders Ignore Science Shortfalls to the Peril of America’s Future

Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and contributing writer to Roll Call, wrote an op-ed on America’s failure to invest adequately in basic research in science and science education.

Read more in Roll Call 

 

The unheeded threat

Newt Gingrich, former House speaker, authored an article in the Ripon Forum on the critical importance of advancing STEM in the U.S. He writes, “Little focus has been paid to just how dangerous it is to allow other countries, especially non-democracies, to become the high-tech centers of the world. "A Nation at Risk" released in 1983 said, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves." Little more than marginal change has been enacted since these reports were issued, and it is unlikely there will ever be a September 11th type of wake-up-call in the realm of math and science education that will motivate us towards dramatic action.”

Read more in the Ripon Forum 
 

Leading Economists Warn That Education Gap Between the U.S. and Industrialized Countries Threatens America's Ability to Compete

America's failure to keep pace with the education gains of other industrialized countries is creating a serious education gap that will impact our economic prosperity, warned some of the nation's preeminent economists who gathered at a national policy forum convened by Strong American Schools' ED in 08 Chairman Roy Romer and Librarian of Congress Dr. James H. Billington. The forum, Remaining Competitive in a Flat World, featured economists and educators who have studied the economic returns of boosting academic achievement and graduation rates.

 Read more on Fox Business
 

A new frontier for Title IX: science

Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science. The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy have set up programs to look for sexual discrimination at universities receiving federal grants. Investigators have been taking inventories of lab space and interviewing faculty members and students in physics and engineering departments at schools like Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, M.I.T. and the University of Maryland.

Read more in the New York Times 
 

$18M Gift Aims To Boost Math, Science in Harlem

The New York City Department of Education is receiving its largest corporate grant ever, an $18 million gift from General Electric that will go toward improving Harlem middle schools, Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday. The grant is focused on math and science — subject areas in which General Electric's chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, said American students are falling behind in worrisome proportions. Working with outside partners such as Teachers College at Columbia University, General Electric will provide its employees as free labor to help out with generating student interest in the subjects. The grant is part of a national program General Electric has already launched in five cities to direct more American students into math and science careers.

Read more in the New York Sun  

Summer in lab beats day at the beach

An undergraduate program at the University of San Diego recruits students who often don't make it into the research ranks: students of color, students whose parents have never been to college or students who are financially needy. The plan is to expose them to science and math in hopes they will choose a career in science – not always a first choice for the Millennial Generation. Formed in 2001 as a way to diversify the sciences, the Pre-Undergraduate Research Experience program enables three to five freshmen to spend six to eight weeks in a lab before starting college, then provides free tutoring for two years.

Read more in the San Diego Union-Tribune 
        
To learn more about the Tapping America’s Potential coalition, visit http://www.tap2015.org/