The new capabilities of the instrument will create an immediate and lasting impact on their ability to recruit high-quality faculty members. As Villanova hires its next generation of faculty members, it will be offer access to leading-edge equipment. The emphasis on nanomaterials fabrication and development necessitates the upgrading of their experimental facilities to attract leading researchers and educators who can make an immediate impact as they join this dynamic group. The PI and co-PIs are all dedicated to improving opportunities and access for under-represented minorities in engineering and the sciences and two of the principals on this grant are female STEM faculty members. The five PIs combined are advising 16 graduate students, 7 of whom are women, and are working with 19 undergraduate students, including 5 women. Bryn Mawr College was established in 1885 as the first institution in the US to offer Ph.D. degrees to women and the undergraduate program remains all-female, featuring 1300 women, 26% of whom are majoring in math or science. The Villanova College of Engineering also features one of the highest percentages of female students studying engineering, at almost 1/3 of the engineering school enrollment.
The requested workstation will serve as a vehicle to draw undergraduate and graduate students into multidisciplinary science and engineering research at TAMIU and TAMUK, which are two main institutions providing STEM programs to historically underrepresented minority students in South Texas. The workstation will broaden the capability of manufacturing and enhance the quality of the undergraduate research opportunities. Specifically, the new micro-manufacturing equipment will enable students to conduct research in a variety of emerging research areas, including microfabrication, microfluidic devices, and bio-micromechanicalelectrical systems (bio-MEMS), which are relatively new to students in South Texas. The PI and co-PIs are well trained in the new areas from highly research oriented institutions and they are all on the frontier of their research fields and very active in publishing and attending professional conferences to disseminate and share their research findings. They will also continue to make research experiences available any time of the year for motivated students by integrating the use of the workstation into the courses, workshops as well as senior projects and encourage them to publish scientific research.
