New funds from higher education commission
Archived article from Sep 28, 2001
By Mark Maben
Rutgers has been selected to receive more than $5 million in new grant funding from the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education (NJCHE), including $4.9 million from the Competitive Awards Program and nearly $500,000 in Teacher Quality and Capacity Grants. The awards were announced by acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco.
The university was awarded four Competitive Awards Program grants, two in the category of High-Tech Workforce Excellence and two more in Teacher Effectiveness.
"We are extremely honored and pleased to have received these awards from the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education," said Joseph J. Seneca, university vice president for academic affairs. "The state is recognizing Rutgers' leadership in these areas, providing the resources we need to ensure our expertise will directly benefit New Jersey's labor force and K-12 students."
Rutgers is one of eight colleges or universities to receive NJCHE Workforce Excellence grants and the only school to be awarded more than one grant.
The largest is $2.5 million for the School of Engineering's "Nanomaterials Science and Engineering: An Enabling Paradigm Shift for Photonics, Energy, Electronics and Biology" proposal. Nanotechnology involves the control of materials at the atomic and molecular levels.
Rutgers will develop an interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum, cooperative programs with businesses and a summer internship program for high school students. According to the principal investigator, Professor Stephen Danforth, the program will prepare students to work in fields important to the state's economy, including electronics, biomedical engineering, energy and polymer technology.
The second Workforce Excellence grant is for the "New Directions for the High-Tech Computer Science Workforce" initiative. The $1.6 million award will be used to add new courses and e-learning tools in computer vision, animation and graphics within the Division of Computer and Information Sciences. The program is designed to meet the workforce needs of the state's biotechnology, pharmaceutical and publishing/media companies, said Professor Tomasz Imielinksi, principal investigator.
In the Teacher Effectiveness category, NJCHE awarded a total of five grants, two of which went to Rutgers.
A partnership comprising the Graduate School of Education, the New Jersey Statewide Systemic Initiative (NJSSI), New Brunswick's Lincoln Professional Development School and Middlesex County College will receive $499,000 for the "Urban Science Education Collaborative for Teacher Effectiveness." The goal is to create a model curriculum for improved science instruction in the state's high-needs districts and to provide professional development programs for teachers. The partnership is headed by principal investigator Deborah Cook of NJSSI.
To address the acute lack of teachers in both foreign languages and science, a $306,000 grant will fund the "Institute for K-12 World Languages and Science" on the Camden campus. Through collaboration with Burlington and Camden county colleges, as well as school districts in Burlington, Camden and Lindenwold, this initiative will develop curricula to train college students who wish to become teachers but are not majoring in a traditional discipline for primary or secondary education. The institute also will run a summer program for established teachers. This alliance is led by principal investigator Marion Hussong of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences-Camden.
In addition to these competitive awards, Rutgers will receive $496,545 under a Teacher Quality and Capacity Grants disbursement formula. This program is designed to bolster the schools of education at 21 New Jersey institutions by supporting teacher preparation programs to meet statewide needs.
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