The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $2 million grant to help fund Hostos Community College’s Engineering Academic Talent-2 (HEAT2) Scholarship Program.
Through this program, 30 students pursuing associate and bachelor’s degrees in mechanical, electrical, civil, chemical, and environmental engineering will receive financial and academic support. The funds awarded by the National Science Foundation will support the program through 2030.
HEAT2 builds on the success of the original HEAT program. The new version aims to increase graduation rates for students focusing on STEM. Comprehensive support that the HEAT2 scholarship program offers includes tuition subsidies –up to $15,000 per year for undergraduates and $20,000 for postgraduate students—faculty and peer mentoring, undergraduate research opportunities, exposure to STEM-related professional environments, and participation in STEM conferences.
Members of the HEAT2 Team include Professor and Chair in the Natural Sciences Department and Principal Investigator Yoel Rodríguez, Mathematics Department Professors and Co-Principal Investigators Nieves Angulo and Clara Nieto-Wire, and Professor in the Behavioral and Social Sciences Department Antonios Varelas. Other key HEAT2 personnel include Physical Sciences Professors Anna Ivanova and Biao Jiang, who will serve as faculty mentors, and Associate Dean Ardie Walser from The City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering.
“I am, once again, so proud of our faculty and their tireless dedication to the students and their success,” Hostos President Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Ph.D., said. “Professor Rodríguez and his colleagues have shown consistently, by securing grants such as this, that they take to heart the mission of the College: to transform lives through education. Bravo!”
HEAT2 is meant to exemplify Hostos Community College’s commitment to providing its students with the resources they need to succeed and contribute meaningfully to the future of engineering. For Rodríguez and the other HEAT2 faculty members, the rewards are personal.
“Seeing these kids and the conditions in which they enter this institution, lacking preparation, lacking skills and many economic challenges, they go all the way: From Hostos to Grove, Cornell, Stanford, wherever. Some of them continue on to grad school and they end up in jobs and even make more money than us. That is priceless. And this is the kind of reward we get every day working at this institution,” Rodríguez said.
“We are grateful, inspired and humbled by this recognition from the NSF. It is a dream come true to continue supporting our Hostos engineering students financially and through mentoring, helping them become great professionals, and contributing to diversifying the STEM workforce,” Professor Rodríguez said. “This award represents years of effort and hard work by our students, faculty, staff and administration to make Hostos’s Engineering and STEM programs competitive nationwide. For the College, this award signals that we, as a community college, are building a reputation for managing and successfully implementing large funding projects.”
