For Immediate Release
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6/18/2014
STEM Students are Nation’s Future Innovators, Support President Obama’s Call to Empower America’s Students and Entrepreneurs.
Suffolk County Community College is proud to support President Obama’s call to empower America’s students and entrepreneurs to invent the future in conjunction with the first-ever White House Maker Faire being held today announced College President Dr. Shaun L. McKay.Maker Faire features makers, innovators, and entrepreneurs of all ages who are using cutting-edge tools to bring their ideas to life.
President Obama is hosting the first-ever White House Maker Faire today and meeting with students, entrepreneurs and everyday citizens who are using new tools and techniques to launch new businesses, learn vital skills in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and fuel the renaissance in American manufacturing.
“Since 2004, Suffolk County Community College has been one of the strongest pipelines of interns to Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), said Suffolk County Community College President Dr. Shaun L. McKay. Suffolk County Community College is second only to Stony Brook University in total number of participants in BNL research programs, McKay said and added that the college’s impressive and long standing record in achieving these research internships includes strong Ivy League competitors such as MIT, Yale, Cornell and others.
- Since 2007, more than 100 Suffolk County Community College STEM scholars have been awarded competitive and paid research internships at DOE laboratories ranging from Brookhaven National Laboratory to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico.
- During the summer of 2013, Suffolk County Community College had four research intern scholars at Stony Brook University (the most of any school) who were awarded paid SUNY Chancellor's Biomedical Education Pipeline Research internships.
- During summer, 2014 Suffolk County Community College has 18 STEM scholars engaged in research internships, including 9 at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the Science Undergraduate Research Internship and the Community College Research Internship programs.
“For more than a decade, Suffolk County Community College’s STEM programs have been integrating research opportunities into their curriculum,” said Suffolk County Community College Chemistry Professor and National Science Foundation Scholarships for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Chair, Dr. Candice Foley. “With their strong STEM start at Suffolk County Community College, our STEM scholars are empowered to achieve their educational goals and aspirations,” Foley said.
Suffolk County Community College is one of a handful of community colleges nationally that have been awarded prestigious grants for STEM scholarships for its students. “Suffolk,” Dr. Foley said, “has had a decade of support from the National Science Foundation including two back to back grants for STEM scholarships totaling $1.2 million; quite an achievement for a community college.”
Dr. Foley cited examples of student work including designing solar powered solutions for the college’s emergency phone communications stands and said that STEM scholar alumni are creating a consortium of engineers to address sustainability solutions for their native country of Haiti.
“Our new STEM and Renewable Energy Building will provide our college and STEM scholars with the capability, in the spirit of the Maker Movement, to pursue innovative solutions which will impact our world and to become stewards for future generations,” Dr. Foley said.
