Partnership Expands Ongoing Efforts To Draw Young People To STEM Careers

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is partnering with the Aerospace States Association in support of the Real World Design Challenge (RWDC), an annual high school competition aimed at increasing the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce.

Embry-Riddle will award up to seven $50,000 scholarships – $12,500 annually per student – to winners of the national competition who attend the university, and its professors will serve as mentors to high school teams and as judges in future national-level challenges. The agreement, starting with the competition in 2014, expands Embry-Riddle’s continuing efforts to encourage young people to pursue technical careers.

Embry-Riddle is the only university formal partner in the competition in which teams of high school students and their teachers try to solve an engineering challenge faced by industry, one in aviation and one in ground transportation. Students first compete in a state-level Governor’s Cup and then each state’s best team competes in the national finals in Washington DC.

“Through this partnership we plan on making the Real World Design Challenge opportunity available to all secondary students in the United States. Embry-Riddle is critical in helping us achieve this goal,” said Ralph K. Coppola, founder of Real World Design Challenge and president of RKC International. “Embry-Riddle’s expertise in aviation will better help us prepare students for careers in this critical area.”

“Having been a national blue ribbon judge since the first Real World Design Challenge, I know that these students are awesome. With guidance from teachers and mentors, they take an actual design issue from concept to an engineering solution,” said Bob Mansfield, executive director of the Center for Aviation and Aerospace Leadership at Embry-Riddle. “This sponsorship gives hundreds of high school students who want to be in the aerospace industry a chance to participate in the RWDC, learn about our exceptional university and have access to our faculty as mentors.”

FMI: www.erau.edu