Minority student as a scholar program: a research grant program for minority students at Penn State Altoona

This paper describes an innovative research grant program for undergraduate minority students at Penn State Altoona. The program allows teams of faculty members and qualified minority students to develop proposals for research projects in various academic disciplines including engineering. These proposals are reviewed by a committee of faculty members and based on their recommendations, research grants are awarded by the program coordinator to selected teams. The minority student(s) and the faculty member work closely on the research project during the time frame of 6-8 months. At the end of the research project, each faculty-minority student team submits a written report to the program coordinator. Later, the team is expected to draft a paper describing the results of research and submit it to a scholarly journal for publication. Several examples of engineering research projects that have been completed by faculty-minority student teams are listed.