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CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Using the Summer to Explore Career Options What to do now to prepare for your next job search. More Details
I'm OK, He's Sleazy How should an untenured female faculty member deal with questionable overtures of her dean? More Details
More Graduates Delaying Their Job Search. A lack of faith in today's job market, just 59% of the 16,500 graduating seniors surveyed had started looking for jobs by the end of April in 2009, compared to 75% who had started by that time last year and 64% in 2007. Only about 40% have actually applied for a job. More Details
FACULTY
Rising Enrollment Leads To More Adjuncts At Community Colleges. Across the US, community college enrollment is rising and colleges are hiring as many new adjunct faculty as they can afford, holding more courses off site, online, and during weekends and evenings. More Details
Experts Discuss Options For Attracting, Involving Undergraduate Minority Students In Research Council on Undergraduate Research noted that faculty often deem undergraduates 'unreliable' and 'risky' as research partners because they tend to change majors, commit limited time and energy to the discipline, or results are low or unproductive for published research. Institutions need to build undergraduate research into the faculty reward system. More Details
TECHNOLOGY
Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers Some scholars say that the online media with new writing is more engaged, more diverse, and more connected to an audience; others argue that tweets and blog posts enforce bad writing habits and have little relevance to the kind of sustained, focused argument that academic work demands. More Details
Website Offers Students Intentionally Corrupted Homework Files; Buys Them Time Corrupted-Files.com, a website that generates corrupted Word, Excel and PowerPoint files for a small fee, which students can then submit via email to professors in place of real papers to get a deadline extension without late penalties. More Details
A Calculating Web Site Could Ignite a New Campus 'Math War' A new Web site called WolframAlpha not only solves complex math problems, but also can spell out the steps leading to those solutions. In other words, it can instantly do most of the homework and test questions found in many calculus textbooks. More Details
Harvard Study Suggests Twitter Users Are Self-Obsessed A random sample of 300,000 Twitter users compared to users of other social networks found that the top 10% of the social network’s most active users accounted for about 90 percent of all tweets, and most of those users were men. The network is dominated by a few tweeters talking about themselves, much more so than other social networks. More Details
Online Educators Won't Have to Spy on Students, For Now New proposed federal rules will not require distance educators to use elaborate new technology to verify that students are taking their own tests, as required by the Higher Education Act reauthorization. More Details
Increased Shift to Online Courses Changing the College Landscape According to some experts, the classic "college experience" is becoming more and more of a minority as the move to an online format is persistent and steady. The number of students taking online courses nearly doubled between 2003 and 2007, representing roughly 3.94 million students. More Details
INTERNATIONAL
Foreign Opportunities Could Prompt Brain Drain In US, Europe Manpower survey shows that 30% of global employers are struggling to find the right people to fill jobs even though unemployment is at, or near, record levels in many countries. Opportunities in the developing world could prompt a 'brain-drain' from America and Europe and exacerbate the talent shortage. More Details
U.S. Speeding Up Visas For Researchers, Grad Students The State Department has added staff and made procedural changes and expects to process researcher visas in two weeks hoping to ease a long backlog that raised fears that scientists would head elsewhere. More Details
State Department Reduces Visa Waiting Period For Scientists The State Department says it is reducing the waiting period for foreign science students and scholars applying for U.S. visas, a move likely to have a major impact in China. Visa Mantis is designed to determine whether specific science students or scholars from other countries pose a threat to U.S. national security. More Details
Coalition Of Science Groups Calls For Visa Reforms A coalition of science organizations including AAAS and AAU has issued a call for reform of visa procedures including streamlining the visa process for short-term visitors in science and technology and renegotiating visa reciprocity agreements with other countries. More Details
CORPORATE & FEDERAL NEWS
Methanol Seen As Poised To Overtake Hydrogen As Fuel of The Future According to some experts, methanol is poised to overtake hydrogen as the widespread future energy source. More Details
Scientists Create Pig Stem Cells, Raising New Possibilities For Xenotransplantation Scientists at the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology in Shanghai have successfully reprogrammed pig skin and bone marrow cells into an embryo-like state with the potential to form body tissue. More Details
Renewable Energy Industry Adding Jobs At Twice National Rate Pew Charitable Trusts indicates the fledgling renewable energy industry has grown steadily over much of the past decade, adding jobs at more than twice the national rate, expanding their work force by 9.1 percent, to 777,000 jobs, from 1998 to 2007. The new jobs pay anywhere from $21,000 to $111,000 a year for various positions including clerks, construction workers, skilled craftsmen and engineers. More Details
Expansion of Green Jobs Economy Pays Large Dividends According to a UC Berkeley study, the expansion of the green jobs economy could continue to pay dividends well into future. The renewable energy industry is more labor intensive than traditional fossil-fuel businesses; using more wind, solar and other types of renewable electricity could generate 87,000 jobs in Calif. by 2050. More Details
FIPSE to Forgo Open Grant Competition The U.S. Education Department quietly revealed that the Fund for the Improvement in Postsecondary Education will forgo its main open grant competition because the program's funds have been drained by 'special focus' competitions mandated by the Obama administration and by Congressional appropriators. More Details
NIST to Offer Grants For Measurement Research The National Institute of Standards and Technology will award $35M in 20 to 60 grants and cooperative agreements for measurement science and engineering research. U.S. higher education institutions and nonprofits among those eligible to apply. More Details
"Hottest Career Options" Include Green Jobs, Embedded Engineering. A dozen of the hottest career options for college graduates during the recession. These include alternative-energy to capitalize on green-energy initiatives; video gaming; worker health and safety opportunities; data mining and analysis; medical diagnostic trials, mobile media programming, embedded engineering, Spanish-English translation services, geriatric health care, and writing for the Web. More Details
Computer Simulation Remains a Growing Industry Expanding industry – with 400,000 employed in U.S. - of creating computer simulations is seen as an academic and professional discipline in its own right. More Details
Innovation Shortfall May Have Contributed To Current Financial Crisis. There's growing evidence that the innovation shortfall of the past decade is not only real but may also have contributed to today's financial crisis. More Details
Companies Should Focus on Expanding Uses of Existing Technology Companies should scour their intellectual property inventories for some new ideas finding new uses for existing technologies, experts say. Most ideas are improvements on things that already exist. More Details
Labor Market Expected to Recover Slowly According to IHS Global Insight, a leading economic forecaster, the areas poised for a jobs rebound later this year from the 6 million jobs lost since the recession began 18 months ago are: Anchorage, AK; Champaign-Urbana, IL; Coeur d'Alene, ID; Columbia, MO; Laredo, TX; and Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux areas of Louisiana. Mors Details
Pentagon Fears Diminished Military Superiority, Shortage of Engineers & Scientists The Pentagon, including the Air Force and the Navy, have begun a hiring boom at government research laboratories, an expansion of scholarships, and advertising campaigns to recruit a new cadre of scientists and engineers amidst fears of a severe shortage of researchers to maintain technological superiority and develop new weapons research. More Details
High Tech Industry Lacks Diversity The Anita Borg Institute reports that Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans only make up 6.8% of engineering and other technical staffers at the seven large high-tech Silicon Valley companies. Many under-represented minorities quit their jobs due to a lack of diversity. More Details |
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EDUCATION & STEM NEWS |
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Advancing Hispanic Excellence in Technology, Engineering, Math and Science |
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Scholarship and Proposal Reviewers Needed
Doctoral students, postdocs and faculty are invited to donate their time to review scholarships or mini-grant proposals this summer. Scholarship reviewers will be asked to review 25 applications, which will take about 20 minutes each to review. Mini-grant proposal reviewers will be asked to review 10—15 proposals, which take about 35 minutes to read and review. If you are interested, please contact Berenice Rodriguez at berenicer@shpe.org or (817) 272-1116. |
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AHETEMS UPDATES |
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June 18, 2009 |
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Germarie Sanchez-Pomales Doctoral Candidate Analytical Chemistry University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus
Current Research: Dr. Sanchez-Pomales defended her dissertation, titled "Non-Covalent Complexes of DNA-Carbon Nanotubes: From Synthesis to Applications," this spring and has received a prestigious National Research Council Research Associateship Program Award to begin her postdoctoral research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in fall 2009. Germarie worked at the Electrochemistry and Interfaces Laboratory directed by Dr. Carlos R. Cabrera. Her research interests include electrochemical and surface characterization of nanomaterials and metallic surfaces, self-assembled monolayers, carbon nanotubes, and biosensors. |
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AVANZANDO! - Congratulations SHPE Graduate Students |
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SHPE Graduate Student Newsletter Information for Today’s Latino Graduate Students |
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Welcome to the Graduate Student Newsletter with news and information for Latino graduate students. If you have any content suggestions, please write to graduate@shpe.org. |
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SHPE UPDATES www.shpe.org |
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Latino Change Agents in Higher Education: Shaping a System that Works for All (2003) Leonard A Valverde (Jossey-Bass)
A group of experienced leaders in higher education, outlines strategies for increasing access and retention to ensure Latino student success and benefits therein to all students. |
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You are invited to submit nominations for our Graduate Student of the Month, which highlights Latino/a graduate students who are excelling in their academics, research, teaching and community service. Please submit your resume/CV and your biographical sketch to graduate@shpe.org for consideration. |
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Hiram Amador - Completed a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of NYU.
Alex Cavallini - Completed a Master of Science and Master of Business Administration from Brigham Young University. The title of his thesis was "Lean Six Sigma as a Source of Competitive Advantage."
Enzo Ferrari - Completed a Master of Science in Telecommunication and Networking Engineering from Florida International University.
Ivan Gonzalo Gomez - Completed a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering & Electronics from the University of Central Florida.
Jose Lobo - Completed a Master of Science in Industrial & Systems Engineering with a concentration in Engineering Management from the University of Florida.
Kindra K Lopez - Completed her Master of Science in Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University
Juan M. Navarro - An Intel GEM Fellow, is completing a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of California Los Angeles. He co-authored a research paper for the International Conference on Advances in Mesh Networks, hosted in part by IARIA and the IEEE. His paper is available at http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/MESH09.html
Rodrigo Orozco - Completed his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation title was "Viscoelastic Stress Analysis of Polymer Composite Structures Using the Radial Basis Functions Method."
Guadalupe Perez - Completed a Master of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California.
Rafael Antonio Prieto Piedrahita - Completed a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of New Hampshire. The dissertation title was "Treatment of Contaminated Sediments Using Reactive Cap Technology Characterization and Modeling of Geotechnical, Hydraulic and Contaminant Transport Behavior of Cap-Sediment Systems."
Germarie Sanchez-Pomales - Completed a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. The title of the dissertation was "Non-Covalent Complexes of DNA-Carbon Nanotubes: From Synthesis to Applications." She was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI) Fellowship where she will spend this summer working under the supervision of Dr. San Ping Jiang at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She was awarded a National Research Council (NRC) Research Associateship Program (RAP) Award, and this fall will start as a postdoctoral research associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Leroy Vargas - Completed a Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Hector A. Wills Velasco- A doctoral candidate in Petroleum Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines was awarded 1st place at the 2009 Rocky Mountain Petroleum Technology Conference graduate paper contest. |
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MARK YOUR CALENDAR !!!!
Graduate Leadership Institute AHETEMS will pilot a Graduate Leadership Institute as part of the SHPE National Institute for Leadership Advancement (NILA), from August 6 - 8, 2009 in Fort Worth, Texas. The Institute intends to host at least 20 FULL-TIME masters and doctoral students for the three day program. This new initiative intends to begin a formal dialogue to better meet the academic, career and professional development needs of Hispanic graduate students. Registration closes June 30, 2009 at 11:59pm PST REGISTER NOW!!! Questions, please call (817) 272-1116. (The forum will convene only if at least 20 full-time graduate students register and attend).
AHETEMS Travel Grants - 2009 Graduate Institute The application for the AHETEMS Travel Grants to attend the 2009 AHETEMS Graduate Institute in Washington DC, from Oct. 29 - 30, 2009 will be available in April. Hispanic full-time masters and doctoral students are encouraged to apply for this two-day academic and professional development event. More Details. |
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If you are unable to view this newsletter, please visit http://www.ahetems.org/graduate/graduate-newsletter/ |
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Saludos from the National Graduate Representative Hello fellow SHPErs: Congratulations to those of you that are completing your degrees this spring. I know many of you are either finishing up finals or throwing up your caps to celebrate the next milestone in your lives. The job market is tough out there, but don’t let the tabloids get you down. The reality is there is a high demand for engineers, no matter where you look. So don’t believe all the negative talk. Go after that dream job and don’t forget to negotiate what you are worth! Engineers will design our future! Saludos, Chriss Chavez National Graduate Representative
2009 SHPE STAR Awards — Deadline July 1 Nominations are now being solicited for the 2009 SHPE STAR Awards to be presented at the 2009 SHPE Conference in Washington DC. Awards to be presented include the prestigious SHPE/GEM Fellowship, Educators of the Year Award, Jaime Oaxaca Award and Junipero Serra Award. Visit www.shpe.org or call the SHPE National Office at (323) 725-3970 for more details. |
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Dow's 2009 BEST Symposium will be held in Midland, MI on September 21-23, 2009. BEST is aimed at introducing doctoral and post-doctoral scientists from U.S. ethnic minority groups to the wide range of rewarding careers in industrial research, and in particular, the many opportunities with the world’s leading specialty chemical and advanced materials company, Dow Chemical. Preferred degree areas are chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, physics, biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, and closely related fields. Applicants should be within 18 months of degree completion by the conference date. All travel expenses, meals and hotel accommodations will be paid. All applications are due by June 20, 2009. More Details. |
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UPCOMING EVENTS |
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STEM Factoid |
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Serving Latino and Other Nontraditional Students
Leading in a Changing America is the fourth brief in Excelencia in Education's series on Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). It portrays the perspectives and leadership choices by a select group of college and university presidents who are on the front lines of the changing higher education landscape.
Hot Skills for 2009
This white paper details the top 10 hot skills that remain in demand today including business skills, programming languages, telecommunications, wireless, and IT Security. (Source: Global Knowledge). |
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Tomorrow’s Professor Mailing List http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/links.html
This Web site contains a myriad of advice column articles for current graduate students, postdocs and faculty - Tomorrow's Academy; Tomorrow's Graduate Students and Postdocs; Tomorrow's Academic Careers; Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning; Tomorrow's Research. |
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ONLINE RESOURCES |
