NEWS

Through its College of Engineering and Science, Louisiana Tech University has become just the fifth university in the country, along with Duke University, Olin College, the University of Southern California and Arizona State University, to implement a Grand Challenge Scholars Program.

Motivated by the National Academy of Engineering’s vision for the future, the Grand Challenge Scholars Program has as its goal to prepare the nation’s engineering students to be leaders and world changers in the face of the major challenges and opportunities that face our society.

The program, endorsed by the National Academy of Engineering, is built around curricular and extra-curricular activities that focus on five key areas: research, interdisciplinary curricula, entrepreneurship, global perspective and service learning.

Students in the program participate in projects, experiences and courses in each area that focus on the National Academy’s grand engineering challenges for our world in the 21st century: economical alternative energy sources, management of the carbon and nitrogen cycles, clean water, urban infrastructure, health informatics and advancement of medicine, brain research, nuclear terror, security of cyberspace, advancing virtual reality and personalized learning, and development of tools to fuel scientific discovery.

Louisiana Tech Engineering and Science Dean Stan Napper is “eager to challenge the best and brightest students at Louisiana Tech to prepare themselves to address the Grand Challenges of our times by taking advantage of these interdisciplinary and service-based activities. The Grand Challenge Scholars from Louisiana Tech will be equipped, and recognized, as leaders for the future, equal to those from other outstanding national universities.”

Students who successfully complete the Grand Challenge Scholars Program will be designated a Grand Challenge Scholar by the National Academy of Engineering upon graduation.

Louisiana Tech’s College of Engineering and Science is a nationally recognized leader in educational innovation whose goal is to become “the best college in the world at integrating engineering and science in education and research.” Louisiana Tech is one of fourteen universities nation-wide to become affiliated with the Center for Advancement on Scholarship in Engineering Education (CASEE), a unit of the National Academy of Engineering.

Written by Catherine Fraser