The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is distributing $30 million in grant money to minority serving institutions to bolster math, science and technology education among non-white students in South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington state.
The funds should help develop science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) proficiency among students at traditionally black, hispanic and tribal colleges. The targeted colleges are in the same states as three major nuclear cleanup properties, according to a Monday press release.
“Leveraging the full potential of America’s best and brightest means including students from every pocket of the nation, and of all races and ethnicities,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in the release.
In this latest funding, the release said $20 million will be sharing among minority serving institutions in South Carolina, where the Savannah River Site is located, another $5 million will be divided among two such colleges in Tennessee, which is home of the Oak Ridge Site and $5 million will go to Northwest Indian College in Washington state, the home to the Hanford Site.
Northwest Indian College’s main campus is on the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham, Wash., with extended satellite campus sites situated on reservations throughout Washington and Idaho, according to the college’s website.
This is among the latest efforts by DOE to financially support technology education via its Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program and foster a diverse pipeline of future employees to help make up for retirements in the aging weapons complex workforce. The acting head of Environmental Management, William (Ike) White, said recently 50% of the cleanup office’s federal workforce could be eligible to retire within five years.