Toppling STEM Dominoes, Job-Search Advice, Funding Galore, and MORE!

February
2018

Student News & Voices

Learn news that affects engineering, engineering tech, and engineering ed students, what they're up to, and what they have to say...in their own words.


	Rohit Kandakatla

A Winding Road: Engineering Education isn't the first thing most students think about when applying to engineering school. How did you become interested in engineering education as a discipline? Read Rohit Kandakatla's story.

What's in this Drink?: In a story that is too familiar to too many people, Danya Sherman's friend was drugged and assaulted in 2016. The George Washington University junior decided to do something about it, inventing the KnoNap: a napkin capable of detecting "26 out of the 40 most commonly used 'date rape' drugs" with the help of an engineering student. Read more.

Negative Reinforcement: Two major prizes are signaling a sea change in research culture, according to Nature. One is in neuroscience and the other is in human brain mapping--but both encourage researchers to publish negative results, which could have huge implications for scientific research in the future. Read about it here.

Faculty-Student Harassment Study: The #MeToo movement has brought more light to the pervasive sexual harassment that women experience in everyday life. Months before the Harvey Weinstein tipping point, Inside Higher Education reported on studies that show blatant harassment of graduate students from faculty . Read more here.

Academic & Professional Development Resources

Tips on navigating politics, from classroom to office.

On the Hunt: Compiling quality job-search materials is a time-consuming headache, especially early in your career. One page résumé or two? Or a full curriculum vitae? Should you add your high school babysitting experience? This article includes résumé templates, résumé writing advice, and guidelines for glittering cover letters. Read it here.

Grant Writing Guidance: Applying for grants takes a huge amount of energy and effort out of your research time. The Chronicle of Higher Education has advice on the top 10 most common (nonscientific!) grant-writing mistakes and how to overcome them. Read more here.

Funding & Internships

Opportunity abounds!

This month's highlights:

The American Welding Society offers a $2,500 award for students in accredited engineering schools who can prove a financial need. Application Deadline: February 15.

The Dotcom-Monitor Women in Computing Scholarship is a $1,000 award open to full-time female undergraduate students in the United States and Canada. Application Deadline: April 1 .

The UNCF offers many different scholarships to African American students, including the Intel Scholarship directed especially toward engineering students. Most application deadlines are in mid-February ; the Intel deadline is March 18 .

The American Society for Civil Engineers ' Innovation Contest was developed as part of the ASCE Grand Challenge to transform the nation's infrastructure. Student winners will be offered first and/or second round interviews for internship opportunities as available. Entry deadline is March 1 .

Find these opportunities here.

Videos & Entertainment

Because sometimes you just need a break!

Video: The History of the Universe--in Dominoes: Kurtis Baute is a Canadian STEM educator who focuses on innovative teaching techniques. In this amazing one-take video, he describes the history of the universe using dominoes. The nine-minute run is the second-longest run of dominoes in history and required a warehouse to hold it. Watch it here.

Video: Engineering a Giant Rubik's Cube: Sameulina Wright and Ryan Kuhn were mechanical engineering students at the University of Michigan. Their movable, solvable 1,500 pound Rubik's Cube was installed on North Campus last spring. See how they made it! Watch it here.

Video: Where Lithium Comes From: High up in the Atacama desert, among the driest places on Earth, is where lithium is mined. This "smart phone juice" is what runs the batteries that power our lives, from phones to electric cars. See it here.