Cal State Long Beach’s engineering department received a $56,250 donation from BP America Inc., an international energy company that owns the Arco gas station network.
The donation will be divided into five $2,250 scholarships a year for five years.
The scholarships will go to full-time electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering undergraduates who have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 and are residents of Long Beach, Carson or Wilmington.
The scholarship is intended to help local businesses meet their employment requirements in the face of massive baby-boomer retirements over the next 5 to 10 years.
“We have been talking [to local employers] about the aging workforce; we want to produce enough graduates for them to take,” said Forouzan Golshani, the dean of the College of Engineering. “The College of Engineering can produce the right kind of talent.”
The residency requirement was put in to help find students who “want to stay to help build our industry right here in Long Beach and Southern California,” said CSULB President F. King Alexander in a prepared statement. According to Alexander, CSULB graduates approximately 500 engineers a year.
“We are committed to keeping these numbers growing while graduating the kinds of students that will enrich BP, other local industries and our community,” he said.
Every year, $100,000 to $200,000 in scholarships are given out through the College of Engineering. Golshani said the goal of the college is to “attract and retain a diversity of students” through these awards.
Paul Nguyen, president of the College of Engineering’s Associated Engineering Student Body, said the donation demonstrated the good reputation CSULB has in the engineering industry.
“It makes a statement because [BP values] the education our university provides,” Nguyen said. “Whenever I speak to representatives from industry, they always speak very well of us.” Nguyen noted that most of the graduates he knew had “easily” found jobs in the industry.
Nguyen also said that he thought the donation could produce a snowball effect that could further bolster CSULB’s reputation.
“That statement can affect other local industries to improve our reputation,” he said.
Engineering student Carol Asher rightly pointed out that finances are a big part of the selection process for a lot of prospective students.
“I think it’ll be a big help,” she said. “If people know that they can … get a scholarship, there can be more drawn here than anywhere else because finances is how they decide where they want to go.”
The first application deadline is April 2 for the fall 2009 set of scholarships. Interested students can find the application at www.csulb.edu/scholarship
This is great. Our College of Engineering rules the state.