New STEM program will educate and train 21st-century workforce

Morgan State University students and faculty hope to expand a new partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of America's oldest physical science laboratories.

Recently, the university announced its participation in the Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) led by Johns Hopkins University.

Last summer, Johns Hopkins said PREP, a five-year program, will be led by its Whiting School of Engineering and Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, which will work with Morgan State and the State University of New York at Binghamton.

The consortium of three universities will combine education programs with real-world experiences to help students understand industry demands and advance measurement science, Johns Hopkins said. NIST measurements support nanoscale devices, earthquake-resistant skyscrapers, and global communication networks.

The universities have worked together before to research such topics as oyster aquaculture and marine animal health assessments; cold-formed steel and how it reacts in earthquakes and fire; and standards for regenerative medicine.

According to Morgan State, the university can receive up to $1 million a year from PREP for its students and faculty to work at NIST laboratories.

“The program is open to students or faculty who meet the requirements of the NIST laboratories,” Dr. Michael Spencer said in a statement. “NIST’s research is in physical science, computational science, and engineering, but they also work in other areas. “If strong collaborations can be established between the laboratories and Morgan through PREP,” he says, “a large number of our students may benefit.”

Spencer is a professor in Morgan’s Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. School of Engineering and the administrator of Morgan’s PREP grant.

To strengthen the connection between MSU and NIST and to facilitate the University’s participation in the research, Morgan has allocated funds to provide bus transportation to NIST headquarters from the Hopkins campus.

“Morgan is fortunate to be situated near several high-quality national laboratories," Spencer said. " NIST is one of them, and they have outstanding resources. So this becomes an opportunity for students and faculty to develop joint relationships with laboratories of interest at NIST. It’s even more fortuitous that our current Vice President for Research and Development (Willie May, Ph.D.) is a former director of NIST.”