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By Joy Vann

As Old Dominion 91����Ƶ is among an elite group of schools having earned Research 1 Classification from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, it continues to expand opportunities for its top students.

One such opportunity is ODU’s membership in The National GEM Consortium (GEM) which aims to increase the participation of underrepresented student groups at the master’s and doctoral levels in engineering and science. The consortium includes more than 120 of the top universities in the country and more than 75 employer members like NASA, IBM, Apple, SpaceX and Intel that seek to enhance their workforces with the best and the brightest.

Liz Smith, director of interdisciplinary initiatives in ODU’s Graduate School, is working to build the GEM Fellowship program at ODU in two ways. The first goal is to increase the number of ODU graduate students (and undergraduate seniors interested in pursuing a graduate degree) who apply for GEM’s prestigious STEM fellowships in time for the November deadline. The second goal is to raise awareness about the rich GEM applicant database among ODU STEM graduate program directors and department chairs so they can effectively leverage ODU’s participation as a GEM member university in their recruiting.

“The GEM Consortium is a partnership between universities and employers which work together to commit to funding the graduate students in STEM. We’re reaching out to students who are already funded to bring them into the network. That is our first goal,” she said. “Then we intend to recruit our STEM-H undergrads who would likely be strong applicants to graduate programs in STEM and encourage them to apply.”

The GEM Fellowship provides opportunities for graduate students to enter the engineering and science workforces in areas such as research and development, product development and other advanced technical and research careers within the private sector, as well as with federal national laboratories and agencies. Since its founding in 1976, more than 5,000 students had their graduate education funded through the program and are working as entrepreneurs, inventors, research scientists and business leaders throughout the country.

Smith said universities with robust GEM involvement saw the development of close-knit cohorts of students who mentored each other through their challenging science and engineering programs and leveraged the network of existing GEM fellows and alumni from across the country to find internships, land jobs and find additional sources of funding.

“It’s a great partnership, the goal of which is to provide funding for promising graduate students to complete their STEM degrees. The idea is to develop a cohort of these fellows who can support each other,” she said. “There are also networking opportunities with GEM alumni which is a deep community working in all in federal agencies, national labs, and big employers like Adobe, Apple, Amazon and 3M to name a few.”

GEM also provides internships through its employer members which will benefit ODU’s master plan to have 100 percent of students participate in some form of work-based learning experience before they graduate.

The current application cycle is open and will close on Nov. 8. For more information visit Fellowships@gemfellowship.org,  call 703-562-3646, or email ODU’s GEM Consortium representative Liz Smith at exsmith@odu.edu.