I am very pleased to announce today that the Board of Directors has voted to create an MTI scholarship to be awarded to a student who is working towards a materials related career in the chemical process industry. The scholarship will be $10,000 and will go directly to the student's educational costs. Any undergraduate or graduate student attending an accredited institution in North America or Europe is eligible to apply. MTI will be partnering with the NACE Foundation to promote, award and administer the scholarship. The NACE Foundation will provide these services to MTI at no cost and a majority of the selection committee will be MTI members. The winner will be recognized both at the NACE annual meeting and at the June MTI meeting. We plan to award the first scholarship in the spring of 2008.
Several years ago the BOD began discussing how to reach out to the university community to encourage students in materials related disciplines to think about careers in the CPI. A steady supply of well trained materials professionals is critical to the long term success of both our industry and MTI. Our first initiative in this area was to invite students and faculty to MTI meetings. This has not been as effective as we hoped it would be. We believe a scholarship will encourage students to work in our field and will also create good will for MTI that will help membership recruitment and retention in the future as scholarship winners spread the word about MTI to their new employers.
This topic will be an agenda item at the Members Meeting in October and the BOD will be interested in feedback on this initiative.
Gary Whittaker, Chairman, MTI Board of Directors