UC Partnership Awarded State Funding to Strengthen Ohio Competitiveness

The University of Cincinnati was awarded more than $3 million in state funding in the first round of the state of Ohio’s new $22.7 million Choose Ohio First Scholarship Program.  As part of the Ohio General Assembly-created Ohio Innovation partnership, this new program aims to attract, retain and graduate students into the high-demand science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) fields and STEMM education.

The UC proposal, in partnership with more than 500 businesses around Ohio including Cincinnati’s Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Duke Energy and Ethicon, plans to attract and graduate 215 new STEMM students over a four-year period, blending classroom study with UC’s world-recognized cooperative education program, in which students alternate their time in the classroom with paid, professional work experience related to their majors.

The awarded UC program, “Coming out of the Pipeline: The UC Interdisciplinary Pathway to STEMM Professionals,” has many innovative ideas for creating opportunity for undergraduate and graduate education at UC. For instance, undergraduates will work in interdisciplinary teams, creating a so-called virtual company to learn of product design and manufacturing. Or, they might have a student capstone experience in medical product design, engineering, innovation and entrepreneurship.

The scholarships would amount to approximately $4,000 annually for each student selected for the program. “This proposal is unique among the awarded proposals as we bring in Ohio businesses as partners to support and enhance the student experience,” says Marshall Montrose, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and leader of the UC writing team that helped develop the proposal. “The striking difference in our plans is to promote interdisciplinary training where students learn to speak the language of different disciplines. For example, an engineering student who’s interested in designing a new device will be working with students in the College of Business to understand market demand and advertising.”

A total of 28 proposals had been submitted for consideration for the Choose Ohio First Scholarship Program. The proposals were reviewed by a seven-member panel of national STEMM educational experts that was appointed by Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric D. Fingerhut.

“It is great to see that the strengths and unique features of some of our programs in the STEMM fields here at UC are being recognized by national reviewers,” says Anthony J. Perzigian, UC senior vice president and provost.

UC is also a partner on two other proposals awarded funding as part of the Choose Ohio First Scholarship Program, including a nearly $4.5 million partnership led by Ohio University to attract an estimated 345 STEMM students over a five-year period. The program aims to make the state a leader in the bioinformatics industry, in which biology, computer science and information technology form a single disciplinary field of study. In addition, a $3.1 million partnership led by Central State University and including UC as a partner aims to recruit underrepresented student populations to the STEMM fields.

Ohio Board of Regents Web Site