AEE FOUNDATION SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
Your contribution today builds the engineers of tomorrow! About the AEE Foundation's Scholarship Fund … Purpose Eligible Studies Applying for Scholarships Contributions Major industry leaders increasingly recognize the value of the AEE Scholarship Program and the importance of their role in contributing to the development of future leaders. Please click here to contribute to the foundation. A Special Announcement from the AEE Foundation A Letter from
Scholarship Committee Chair Jim Waltz, P.E., C.E.M., A.C.F.E. AEE 2008 SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM Completing my eighth year as the Association's Scholarship Chair, I have a need once again to share a few thoughts about the program with the membership and the public at large. I believe that education and scholarship are taken too much for granted. Our society seems to have lost a little of its “edge” in the last few decades as regards the value that scholarship (i.e., learning more or less for the sake of it) has in our society. There continues to be considerable dialogue regarding the need for reforming our public education system in America, and I am sure each of us has his or her own ideas about that - myself especially as a former school board member out here in California. One truth that is fundamental is that no society has a future but for the intelligence, knowledge and productivity of its members, especially those youngsters who will be our business and government leaders in decades to come. Both private and public retirement programs, for example, only succeed if the society and the business entities within it succeed and create the wealth necessary to support these retirement programs. The problems we face with Social Security, and with large corporations' retirement obligations make this manifest. To put it simply, the youth of America are literally the future of America. Nowhere have I experienced this more dramatically than when teaching the Fundamentals of HVAC at San Francisco State University the past four years. The mix of faces, backgrounds (and even nationalities) has been vivid, and the interest and enthusiasm great (this year I even had a 2007 student return to participate in the 2008 final exam / project presentations). AEE, I am proud to say, has no confusion regarding the value of scholarship. The Foundation has made scholarship awards to worthy scholars for well over two decades now. In recent years new features have been added to AEE's scholarship program. These include the creation of a new scholarship (instituted at WEEC 2002) in honor of our founder Albert Thumann, and the addition of scholarships for international students. While we lost an important corporate sponsor last year, I am working hard to restore that and have hopes for a new corporate sponsor for next year! As a former K-12 school system volunteer, former gifted-education-association program director and board member, former K-12 public school board member, speaker, author and professional educator (at the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University), I have long had a strong interest in and sense of obligation to support scholarship in my communities. I am fortunate in being assisted by a truly most illustrious committee (not to mention the AEE headquarters staff, Mary Elise Cox especially). The committee consists of six individuals including myself and boasts four AEE International Award recipients, two charter members, two C.E.M.'s and four P.E.'s! I am proud and honored that Donald Anderson, James Kozelka, Matthew Muniz, Robert Spitzka and Vincent Scoccia have ably contributed to accomplishing the work of the Scholarship Committee these many years. The results of the committee's efforts are the award winners listed below. We commend this year's scholarship winners for your praise and admiration for their energetic pursuit of higher education. While the “official” work of the committee is complete for the year, the unofficial work is just about to get underway, and we need help with it. With the growth of the Association, the growth of number of scholarship applicants and the ever-increasing cost of education, we need to bolster and enhance the financial underpinnings of the scholarship program. To that end, the Committee would like to expand AEE efforts from appealing primarily to the membership to appealing directly to major industries and institutions and their leaders. In making appeals to top executives, it will be very helpful to receive industry volunteers, and to receive referrals and/or contact information to key industry and institutional leaders who may be able to assist us. If you can help us personally, or can recommend a key potential contributor contact, please pass that information along to myself ( jpwaltz@eraenergy.com ) or to the staff at AEE Headquarters. AEE Scholarship Committee Chair,
For your convenience, click on the links to these documents (PDF format): Please email Mary Elise Cox if you have any questions. To obtain a Chapter Recommendation, search for a Chapter in your area. |
|---|
