Kauffman Foundation Grant to Olin College Creates Award Program Highlighting Student Contributions to Solving Major World Problems
The Kauffman Foundation has awarded a $50,000 grant to Olin College of Engineering to fund an award program highlighting outstanding student contributions to solving the major challenges facing the world today.
The “Extraordinary Stories Student Awards” will be given to students who have completed science and engineering projects that tie directly to the 14 Grand Challenges as outlined by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) at a national summit in March 2009: http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/. The Grand Challenges are a critical grouping of problems in such areas as environment, energy, education and security that must be solved to ensure a sustainable future.
Over the next few months, nominations will be solicited from students and recent graduates who have made special contributions towards one of the Grand Challenge problems or areas. Nominations may be in the form of an essay or a video, may come from anywhere in the US and may be for an individual or group of students ranging from pre-college through graduate school and a few years beyond. The nomination should demonstrate how the work addresses a Grand Challenge problem or area and provide information about the educational context, formal or informal, that enabled or facilitated the work.
The stories collected through this process will be showcased on a blog and at a major summit to be held April 21 at Wellesley College. Co-sponsored by Olin, Wellesley and Babson College, the summit will bring together educators, students and leaders from business and government to explore new ways to educate the next generation of Grand Challenge leaders and to celebrate the efforts of young people working to solve grand challenge problems. The award winners will be selected prior to the April meeting so that high production value videos of their stories can be produced. The actual awards will be given at a special dinner the evening of the April meeting.
U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra will lead an excellent lineup of speakers at the conference. For more information on the summit and the student awards program, visit http://grandchallengesummit.olin.edu/.
