The five-year, $20 million grant will highlight statewide research collaboration among higher education institutions, national laboratories, and industry.

The Externship Program is a research exchange program that allows New Mexico graduate students (with an existing assistantship) to spend a semester or summer doing research at a partnering New Mexico university or research facility. This report is from New Mexico Tech student Hanqing Pan about her externship at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO.

When I first started with NM EPSCoR in 2013, one of my major tasks was to recruit students for our undergraduate research program, the STEM Advancement Program (STEMAP). Three and a half years later, I had traveled over 5,000 miles to visit 22 of 25 primarily undergraduate institutions (open to see the map). Those miles traveled and campuses visited resulted in 200 students applying for STEMAP from 2014 to 2017.

We are proud to announce this year's recipients of the NM EPSCoR Mentoring Award: Catherine Brewer, Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University; Marty Kirk, Distinguished Professor at the University of New Mexico; and Juchao Yan, Professor at Eastern New Mexico University. Mentors are able to create a professional and social relationship with students that encourage them to take the next step in their careers through listening, advising, supporting, providing feedback, increasing students’ networks, and solving problems, to name a few roles and characteristics. Click to learn more about these outstanding mentors.

Chelsea Chee, our Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator, was honored last week by the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE)with their 2018 Rising Star Award. She traveled to Washington, D.C. to receive this honor. This prestigious award honors a person at the beginning of their career who has demonstrated exemplary leadership traits promoting access, equity, and diversity in education and/or the workforce.

How do we build a more prosperous future for New Mexico that is driven by the tremendous potential of an innovation and high tech economy? How can we ensure that all of our students have the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and training to participate in the workforce of the future? These were the central questions for the Diversity Innovation Working Group (DIWG) that convened in Albuquerque in August 2017.

This year was a year of firsts and lasts. Near the beginning of the year, we honored Dr. Michael Heagy and Dr. Jose Cerrato with our very first NM EPSCoR Mentoring Award.

November 2017 was one of our busiest months of the whole year! At the start of the month we had our annual Research Symposium in partnership with the New Mexico Academy of Science, and at the end of the month we held our final RII-4 All Hands Meeting, as well as a State Committee meeting. See below for recaps on the NMAS Symposium and the All Hands Meeting.

The Externship Program is a research exchange program that allows New Mexico graduate students (with an existing assistantship) to spend a semester or summer doing research at a partnering New Mexico university or research facility. This report is from New Mexico State University student Meshack Audu (pictured center in the group photo) about his time as an extern at the Santa Fe Community College (SFCC).