The Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University has been awarded a contract to support Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) such as the AggiE-Challenge program. The contract is part of the $5 million grant awarded by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to the VIP University consortium to support large teams of undergraduates working with graduate students and faculty on long-term research projects. The VIP Consortium is led by Georgia Tech University and the University of Michigan and consists of the following schools: Purdue University, Texas A&M University, Rice University, University of Washington, Howard University, Morehouse College, Florida International University, Boise State University, Colorado State University, University of Hawaii-Manoa, Virginia Commonwealth University and two international universities.
"The Helmsley Charitable Trust is thrilled to support the VIP Consortium’s transformative approach to active learning in engineering," said Ryan Kelsey, program officer at the trust. "It is very compelling to see such a range of engineering schools across the country that are ready to adopt large-scale, effective practices that we expect will retain more students, particularly more women and students of color."Dr. Prasad Enjeti,
Dr. Prasad Enjeti, associate dean for academic affairs, is the principal investigator (PI) while Magda Lagoudas, executive director for industry partnerships, and Dr. Jeff Froyd, TEES research professor are co-PIs.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with our peer institutions in the VIP consortium and join our efforts to promote innovation and research among engineering undergraduates through working on real-world projects, graduate world-class engineers to address the needs of our nation, and improve retention of students in engineering,” Enjeti said.
The VIP funds will support two major efforts on the Texas A&M campus: (1) Improving the infrastructure for recruiting, registering, tracking, and evaluating the undergraduate students who participate in the VIP projects; and (2) Improving the processes through which the learning outcomes that have been established for the VIP projects, which are a subset of the learning outcomes required by ABET, are evaluated.
For more information on the collaboration with VIP, please contact Lagoudas at m-lagoudas@tamu.edu.