Grant to Provide Tuition Support to Engineering Students Completing Paid Internships

A STEM Talent Challenge grant from the United States Economic Development Administration will provide Utah State University engineering students a unique opportunity to intern with one of six industry partners.

Students who are selected for these paid internships will also receive funds to cover one semester of tuition. The funding from the Economic Development Administration will support this program for two years and provide opportunities for 28 students.

“The focus is to provide students internship opportunities so they can get some real-world industry experience and find job opportunities in the three areas that this project targets,” said Ning Fang, head of the Engineering Education Department.

Fang is part of the group of College of Engineering faculty and staff members who submitted the proposal for this project. He said the internship opportunities will be in the fields of advanced manufacturing, electric vehicle transportation and renewable energy. These areas were selected because they are high-growth industries in the state of Utah.

“We are excited,” Fang said. “I expect the competition for these internships will be strong.”

Faculty members from Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Electronics & Computer Engineering, and Biological Engineering will collaborate to make this project possible. Students and industry members who participate will be interviewed about their experience in an effort to understand the impacts of the internship for all parties involved.

“This is definitely beneficial to students, to employees and also to USU,” Fang added. “So I think of it as a win-win-win for everybody.”

Industry partners for the project include the Utah Advanced Materials & Manufacturing Initiative known as UAMMI, Northrop Grumman, Autoliv, the ASPIRE Engineering Research Center, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and WesTech Engineering.