Thirty-two students from six LI high schools will be enrolling at Farmingdale State College in fall 2020 and fall 2021 with $20,000 four-year scholarships, thanks to a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
The $1 million S-STEM grant is the largest NSF grant ever awarded to the College.
It will provide scholarships for academically talented, low-income students in STEM
fields. The students must major in either Applied Mathematics or Biology.
Scholarship money will be awarded to students regardless of whatever financial aid
they receive from other sources. If a student's tuition is covered by other aid, then
the $5,000 per-year NSF scholarship money may be used for transportation, meal plans,
books, or other expenses.
The high schools participating in the project include Uniondale, Central Islip, J.F.
Kennedy, Brentwood, Connetquot, and Walt Whitman. Among the partner institutions that
will invite STEM students to conduct research at their facilities during the summer
are Rutgers University; Feinstein Institute for Medical Research; and Brookhaven National
Laboratory.
The grant was written by Dr. Beverly Kahn, director of the College's Research Aligned
Mentorship (RAM) program. "This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated
scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians," she says, "by supporting
the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated
financial need."
Earlier this year, Farmingdale received a $300,000 NSF grant for a program that will
bring minority PhD students in the STEM fields to the College, where faculty will
mentor them as teaching assistants, with the goal of hiring them as full-time faculty.
