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ANSI Members Awarded NIST Education Challenge Grants

12/11/2012

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC)'s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) - a government member of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) - has announced that its Standards Services division has awarded six grants as part of an effort to improve the integration of standardization into the formal curriculum of business and engineering programs at U.S. colleges and universities. The Education Challenge Grants are intended to educate students about the value and benefits of standards in academia and the workforce, while also identifying new educational approaches to illustrating the impact of standards that can be used in other programs.

Two of the grants were awarded to projects overseen by a partnership between Purdue University and SES - The Society for Standards Professionals, an ANSI organizational member. One of the grants will support the implementation of a pilot program of self-placed, online courses linked to Purdue's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum. The other grant will help fund the creation of a new course that focuses on the real-word applications of standards in fields associated with STEM education.

In addition, ANSI organizational members Georgetown University and San Jose State University were each the recipients of NIST Education Challenge Grants. The grant received by Georgetown will assist in the development of an online multi-disciplinary standards curriculum for students, while the grant to the San Jose State University Research Foundation will support the creation of new course material on standards and standardization that is intended to be integrated into an existing business curriculum.

"By integrating standards and standardization into the formal curriculum and showing students how standards support innovation, we will begin to introduce the next generation of engineers and business leaders to the importance of standardization to good design and the return on investment that standards provide," said Gordon Gillerman, NIST chief of standards services.

NIST is expected to release proposal deadlines and other information about next year's Education Challenge Grants in early 2013. For more details, contact Erik Puskar ([email protected]).

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