THURSDAY: Reception Celebrates UC s Choose Ohio First Scholarship Recipients

The University of Cincinnati will celebrate the Ohio students awarded scholarships meant to recruit and retain them into the STEMM professions.

UC welcomes its 535 Choose Ohio First scholarship recipients to the second-annual Choose Ohio First ice cream social at 5 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 30, in the Great Hall of Tangeman University Center (TUC).

UC is anticipating a total of $12.5 million in five-year funding from the state following a competition of scholarship proposals from universities around Ohio to strengthen and restructure the state’s economy by building a talented workforce in the high-demand STEMM professions.

“The program does a fantastic job of recruiting the best and brightest students in Ohio, in addition to supporting talented minorities, women and first-generation college students in these fields,” says Thomas Cruse, UC associate provost and STEMM coordinator.

UC’s Choose Ohio First scholarship awards began in fall 2008. Three more UC-awarded Choose Ohio First programs get underway in 2010, awarding a total of 358 students:

Enhancing the Success of Future Health Care Professionals through Synergistic Cross-Collegiate Programming – This is a partnership involving Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, Sinclair Community College, Greater Cincinnati Tech Prep Consortium, UC Health, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Drake Hospital. The program ultimately will support an estimated 200 students interested in pursuing careers in the health field, and opened this fall to qualifying sophomores. UC’s representation in the partnership includes the College of Allied Health Sciences, McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, College of Nursing, Clermont College and Raymond Walters College. The project was developed in consultation with the UC College of Medicine and UC College of Pharmacy.

Master’s Degrees as Conduits to Recruiting, Retaining and Upgrading the Ohio STEMM Work Force – UC aims to recruit and graduate approximately 100 students in graduate-level STEMM fields over a five-year period and will strive to build a highly skilled Ohio workforce in the health professions, engineering, environmental jobs and business. Participating UC degree programs represent colleges across the university.

Cincinnati STEMM Hub Partnership: A New Model for Preparing the Next Generation of Dynamic and Innovative Secondary STEMM Educators – This program will further develop Cincinnati’s  pre-kindergarten-through-college pipeline of education in the STEMM fields, particularly in supporting the transformation of Cincinnati Public’s Hughes Center into an innovative high school to promote excellence in STEMM. The program will recruit three groups of students from the Hughes STEM High School partners and neighboring public schools beginning their junior year. The students will pursue fields in secondary science education and/or mathematics teacher education at the high school before completing their baccalaureate degree at UC. UC will provide matching scholarships to support all three cohorts as they pursue their college education at UC. The first college cohort will begin at UC in fall 2011.

The University of Cincinnati is one of America's top 20 public research institutions. Approximately $400 million in sponsored research takes place annually at the university’s four campuses each year and the university has an economic impact of $3 billion annually.

The new edition of U.S. News & World Report’s annual college guide lists the University of Cincinnati among its “Best National Universities,” and continues to cite UC as an “up and comer.”

The Princeton Review lists UC in the 2011 edition of its annual college guide, “The Best 373 Colleges.”  Last March, Forbes named UC among the world’s most beautiful college campuses.