UNM-Valencia receives a STEM grant award, bringing a big boost to local economy
According to a UNM Newsroom press release, The National Science Foundation recently awarded UNM-Valencia a grant of $1 million to provide STEM scholarships for students.
The Scholarships for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics grant will be dispersed over the next five years to provide a minimum of 15 scholarships a year for students who have financial need and are majoring in science, mathematics, engineering or information technology at the branch campus, according to the press release.
“I am pleased that UNM-Valencia has been awarded the NSF Scholarship grant. I know many students will be able to take advantage of these funds to further their education,” Miriam Chávez, Ph.D., and Regents’ Professor of Biology at UNM-Valencia, is quoted as saying in the press release.
According to the press release, eligible students must be enrolled full time at UNM-Valencia and demonstrate financial need through filing a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and the award will be based on the unmet need of their financial aid award.
Recruitment began at the beginning of the spring semester with the first grantee cohort starting in fall 2017.
Due to a need for well-qualified workers in STEM fields and manufacturing industries in Central New Mexico, the project is designed to prepare students for future employment, according to the press release.
According to the press release, the result will be a significant economic impact on the region through providing a qualified workforce for employers to utilize and grow their companies.
The scholarships will also support the financial base of the families of students who receive the money to help pay for school.
Because UNM-Valencia is a two-year college, a Minority Serving Institution and a Hispanic Serving Institution, it is anticipated that lessons learned from the project will provide information regarding the improvement of retention, graduation and transfer rates for a diverse group of low-income STEM students, according to the press release.
For more information about UNM-Valencia Campus visit their website or call 505.925.8560.
NAS grant will fund research toward railroad and bridge safety
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According to a UNM Newsroom press release, two Department of Civil Engineering professors at UNM have received nearly $100,000 from the National Academy of Sciences to make railroad bridges safer through the use of drones and lasers.
Fernando Moreu, assistant professor of civil engineering, and Mahmoud Taha, professor and chair of civil engineering, have been awarded the National Academy of Sciences Transportation Research board IDEA Award, according to the press release. The project, titled “Railroad Bridge Inspections For Replacement Prioritization Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with 3D Laser Scanning Capabilities,” will use small and mobile technologies to assess and test the safety of bridges.
According to the press release, the advantage of using UAVs and lasers is the technology can assess the safety of critical structures under traffic, collecting information that might otherwise not be collected because bridge displacements are difficult to collect.
CN Railway is a partner and will provide input throughout the project, with the end result being a feasibility and cost analysis of using and developing UAVs and laser technologies for railroad bridge inspections and assessment for multiple spans and multiple bridges within a given territory, according to the press release.
According to the press release, the main focus of the research is freight traffic and transportation, but the application is expected to assist any type of railroad operations, including passenger and intercity passenger rail.
While the project is initially funded for a year, Moreu hopes the results of the first year will attract additional years of support to help railroad industries adopt the research into their operations, according to the press release.
“We are working closely with those who will be the ones commercializing and adopting this application into their day-to-day operations,” Moreu said. “UNM will provide railroads with objective information to inform their decisions about infrastructure serviceability.”
UNM professor receives honor for service to culturally marginalized communities
According to a UNM Newsroom press release, Kris Goodrich, an associate professor in Counselor Education at UNM’s College of Education, was recently honored by the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision.
The organization, dedicated to quality education and supervision of counselors in all work settings, awarded Goodrich the Publication in Counselor Education and Supervision Award for his book “Group Counseling with LGBTQI Persons,” co-authored with his colleague Melissa Luke, according to the press release.
“Melissa and I both have extensive experience in providing group counseling to clients,” Goodrich was quoted as saying in the press release. “We were shocked to see the lack of attention to LGBTQI clients in the group counseling or group work literature. As such, we wanted to provide practitioners and the field a resource to ensure that intentional and culturally responsive care could be provided to clients from this community. That is ultimately what inspired this work.”
According to the press release, Goodrich who, as a Ph.D. student specializing in LGBTQI issues in counseling, took a special interest in supporting culturally marginalized communities and plans to continue this work at UNM.
In each of the courses he teaches, Goodrich focuses on different marginalized communities his students might come across in their future work, and discusses how culturally appropriate interventions can be ethically used in their clinical or school counseling practice, according to the press release.
According to the press release, Goodrich and his colleagues plan on publishing two sets of standards of care that address assessment and research of LGBTQI persons in counseling.
This will be published in the Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling in the last issue of this year, as part of a special issue Goodrich is co-editing as an initiative of his recent presidency of the Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues in Counseling.
With the support of his colleague Melissa Luke, Goodrich coauthored a book that has earned him national accolades.
~Complied by Matthew Reisen
