Foundation grants to fund education, leadership efforts

The ASME Foundation Board of Directors distributed $200,000 in grants to units of ASME at the 2001 Congress.

The ASME FIRST Scholarship Program will award six $5,000 scholarships to high school seniors participating in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition.

The scholarship, which is for students entering college mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering technology programs, should attract many highly qualified applicants. Awards are based on technical, leadership and creative contributions plus academic merit and financial need. To foster widespread interest, the program was announced at the Congress last month, where FIRST founder Dean Kamen was the plenary speaker.

The ASME Professional Practice Curriculum is a three-year project designed to better prepare engineering students to assume a responsible role in the profession by raising their awareness of the issues, topics and considerations that they will deal with in the early portion of their careers.

The Council on Education will develop and market an ASME professional practice "curriculum" that will be delivered free of charge via the Web for use by individual students, college faculty and ASME student sections. The program, funded at the $95,000 level for 2002, will help colleges satisfy the societal and professional aspects of the new ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) criteria that are being phased in through 2004.

The Federal Government Fellowship Program will place an engineering fellow in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The one-year $50,000 program will provide valuable public service to the nation by making available much-needed engineering expertise that will aid in the development of technologically sound public policy. The fellow will gain firsthand knowledge of how the executive branch works, which will be shared with the ASME Board on Government Relations to promote public policy that contributes to national and human welfare.

The Web-Based Learning Module on Intellectual Property will fill a critical gap in the understanding of practitioners and students by developing and distributing a unit on intellectual property issues related to the practice of engineering.

It will emphasize the importance of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets, while fostering better understanding of intellectual property. Building on the success of the ASME publication, Intellectual Property: A Guide for Engineers, the Web-based module will be developed by a volunteer task force of the ASME Committee on Issues Identification and Board on Professional Development, in consultation with the American Bar Association. This program was awarded $25,000.

The grant program is funded by an endowment started with the proceeds of a special capital campaign conducted in 1996-97. Units of ASME are eligible to submit proposals for funding in three areas — technical literacy, career planning and skills development, and public policy.

For further information, visit www.asme.org/asme/foundation or contact Dave Soukup at (212) 591-7397 or soukupd@asme.org.

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