Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network, a non-profit organization, has been instrumental in improving the education of minority groups that have been historically undeserved by the nation's educational system. A successor to the Quality Education for Minorities Project, based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, QEM develops effective strategies in the education of minority students, focusing on mathematics, science and engineering education, and the issues and barriers that prevent minorities from receiving a quality education. However, in order for institutions to be able to offer competitive research and research training programs in the sciences, facilities in which these activities are performed must be modernized. This award to QEM will make it possible to provide technical assistance to institutions by conducting workshops on research facilities. The goals are to equip institutional teams to prepare competitive proposals to the NSF, and to support the process of facilities modernization needed to strengthen science, mathematics, and engineering programs. Assistance provided by QEM will furnish institutions with the tools required to submit a successful facilities modernization proposal. Therefore all US institutions will have opportunity to secure funds needed to provide state of the art facilities for faculty and students in their quest to unravel the challenges presented by the universe.
