Two Universities Receive NIST Funding to Develop Standards Curricula

GAITHERSBURG, Md.—The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has made two awards totaling $150,000 to support standards education in undergraduate and graduate level curricula. Since the program began in 2012, NIST’s Standards Services Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program has received 174 applications and made 33 awards totaling over $2 million.

Projects awarded under this program support curricula development to integrate content on documentary standards and standardization processes into courses, modules, seminars and learning resources, including sustainable approaches, methods and models that can be replicated and/or built upon by other educational programs into undergraduate and graduate curricula at U.S. colleges and universities. 

The latest recipients are:

North Carolina State University (Raleigh, North Carolina) - $75,000

To create educational modules for undergraduate and graduate students to learn about standards and tools that allow for a comprehensive evaluation of the life-cycle of green buildings and sustainable materials. The modules can be used in a traditional classroom or online learning environment. NCSU will also develop case studies to provide students with hands-on experiences applying standards in decision making.

University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia) - $75,000

To develop an interdisciplinary curriculum sequence focused on smart sustainable cities. The curriculum will integrate standardization, innovation studies, and engineering education to inspire engineers to think about societal challenges like transportation, energy, the environment and healthcare in new ways. This project is a collaboration between the Department of Engineering and Society, a unit within the School of Engineering and Applied Science, focused on engineering responsibility and ethics education; Link Lab, an innovation hub at UVA which provides cutting edge interdisciplinary research in cyber-physical systems; and the University Library, offering standards databases and integrated data repositories.

Information on future and previous awards can be found on the NIST Standards Coordination Office website, standards.gov.

As a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. To learn more about NIST, visit www.nist.gov.