Achievement

When the NSMS core courses were initiated, we allowed undergraduate students with senior status to also enroll in these courses. This allowed us to expose undergraduate students to the concepts that form the core of the NSMS graduate program. While this model is quite successful, we have found that where we have enough student demand, we can create new spin off courses at the undergraduate level. A new senior-level course, Chemistry and Physics at the Nanoscale, was developed by Prof. Debi Evans in the Chemistry department. During spring 2009, this course has 38 undergraduates enrolled in this class. Likewise, Professors Al-Haik, Luhrs, Leseman and Khraishi were awarded a NUE grant (EEC-0741525) to develop undergraduate nanoscale engineering curricula. This year, we were able to recruit a minority female undergraduate student from Mechanical Engineering as a result of this program. The impact of the NSMS IGERT on undergraduate education is evident through these programs.