College of Engineering and Computer Science, AFRL launch assistantship program

NEWS RELEASE

May 11, 2012

The Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science has created 30 scholarships and internships for Ohio undergraduate students that also provide a guaranteed internship with a regional employer, the university announced Friday, May 11.

“It’s more than a scholarship,” said S. Narayanan, dean of the college. “When the students graduate from the college, they will have hands-on experience that gives them a direct line on a job upon graduation, and they will graduate virtually debt-free.”

Dayton region defense and aerospace employers are increasingly looking to colleges to develop a workforce to fill a pipeline of jobs to support Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

Wright State was designated in summer 2011 by the State of Ohio as the lead institution to grow workforce development for the state’s defense and aerospace sector.

The program—the Dean’s AFRL-Discovery Lab Industry Experiential Learning Assistantship­—is geared toward recruiting and retaining high-quality Ohio high school students to create a local workforce.

Each student will get a renewable scholarship of $6,000 per academic year and will work on a summer research project through a research assistantship with AFRL’s Year at the Edge (YATE) Program, earning an additional $4,000. The assistantship is for three years—a minimum of two years with AFRL, and the third with an industry partner.

Each student will then be eligible for an internship in his or her senior year with the sponsoring industrial partner, positioning the student for a full-time position upon graduation.

The YATE program in AFRL’s Discovery Lab is an intense internship program sponsored by AFRL. Students work in teams mentored by researchers from government, industry and academia. Student research projects have tackled problems in autonomous systems, smartphone applications, layered sensing, nanomaterials, cybersecurity and virtual worlds, among others.

“This assistantship is a great opportunity to collaborate with Wright State and industry to help accelerate technology innovations important to the Air Force and the region while also growing tomorrow’s technology leaders,” said Rob Williams, Ph.D., research director for the Discovery Lab and the YATE research internship program.

For more information on the Dean’s Scholarship-Assistantship, visit http://cecs.wright.edu or call the College of Engineering and Computer Science at (937) 775-5001.