FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 14, 2006
FY06-20
Middle Tennessee State University Among Seven New Members of ORAU Consortium
OAK RIDGE, Tenn.—Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) welcomed Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) as one of the newest members of its university consortium during the 61st annual meeting of the ORAU Council of Sponsoring Institutions held in Oak Ridge.
MTSU and the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSD) joined the ORAU Consortium as associate members. In addition, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Penn State University (PSU), San Diego State University (SDSU) and the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) have been accepted by the Council as the newest ORAU sponsoring institutions.
With these additions, the ORAU Consortium now consists of 96 sponsoring institutions and 13 associate members, representing 28 states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and London. Membership in the ORAU consortium allows faculty and students at member institutions opportunities to win members-only grants and internships as well as participate in laboratory research at federal facilities, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
"This prestigious new class of member institutions brings an incredible array of assets in terms of academic reputation, scientific research, human resources, and innovation in educating the next generation of science and technology leaders," ORAU President Ron Townsend said. "I could not be more pleased to welcome such a diverse group of universities to the ORAU family. I expect that the entire consortium will benefit from the contributions of these newest members for years to come."
MTSU was founded in 1911 as a teacher training school and has become the fastest growing university in the state of Tennessee. Located on 466 acres in Murfreesboro, Tenn., MTSU has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students and offers 69 undergraduate majors and 70 areas of study in graduate education, a third of which are in science, technology and engineering.
The addition of MTSU, JHU and CMU comes as a natural outgrowth of a partnership between those schools and ORAU in pursuing science, technology, engineering, and math education through a Congressionally mandated Science and Engineering Education Pilot Program (SEEPP). Authorized in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the SEEPP program is designed to help students teachers at every grade level-from kindergarten to college undergraduates, including teacher education-learn about scientific research in the country's leading laboratories and then put those methods back in their own classrooms and beyond.
Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is a university consortium leveraging the scientific strength of 96 major research institutions to advance science and education by partnering with national laboratories, government agencies, and private industry. ORAU manages the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for the U.S. Department of Energy.