Vision Statement
The vision of our UTRGV/UMN PREM is to develop human capital and infrastructure by bridging fundamental and engineering research on nanomaterials with innovation in the development of devices and systems for practical applications, while enhancing and strengthening representation of minority students in materials science careers.
The UTRGV team envisions the PREM program to be a formal venue to facilitate the development of long-term materials research and education programs. This highly interdisciplinary center will pool the resources of talented junior and senior faculty from seven departments within UTRGV into the development of materials, devices and system analysis. In addition to research support, the UTRGV-UMN PREM team will facilitate this goal with regular seminars, research group meetings, multiple exchange visits, and access to instrumentation. The results will include increases in external funding, refereed reviewed publications, undergraduate (UG) students entering graduate school and UG students entering the workforce in materials science areas. As for recruitment and retention, proven strategies will be used since the past success rate has been 100% for PREM UG students.
The UTRGV/UMN partnership will provide, inter alia, technical expertise, access to a broad range of instrumentation for advanced materials characterization, student and faculty exchanges, seminars, and access to industrial collaboration. PREM 2015 will take advantage of the technical and proven successes in education, mentoring and supervision of UG and MS students to achieve PREM’s goals of developing a global materials science research enterprise with a high level of scholarly achievement, while increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in STEM careers.
Specifically, the goals of the UTRGV/UMN PREM are:
- To expand and consolidate a multidisciplinary team of researchers (seven departments are represented) into a sustainable Materials Science Research Center of Excellence (established during PREM Class 2009).
- To enhance the technical partnership with UMN with continuing joint success in education and outreach.
- To provide junior faculty with a research platform to promote their Materials Science Research (MSR)/education careers. Faculty enrichment, in turn, promotes student development.
- To continue to build the Tier I pipeline of minority students, to overcome the underrepresentation of scientists and engineers (>60% of our UG researchers pursue graduate school).
To increase technological and scientific awareness in K-12 and the RGV community in general.