NIST Standards Coordination Office Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program: News Items

News Items

2026 World Standards Day Paper Competition – Deadline Sept 30th

There’s still time to enter the 2026 World Standards Day Paper Competition, sponsored by SES – The Society for Standardization Professionals and the U.S. Celebration of World Standards Day Planning Committee. Authors may write about the 2026 World Standards Day theme, “An Electrifying Future Powered by Standards,” or explore any standards-related topic. Suggested areas include standards supporting societal priorities such as sustainability, accessibility, safety, security, and intelligent transportation; standards and conformity assessment; the role of standards in industry success; standards development and publication practices; standards and the law, including patents, copyright, and antitrust considerations; and standards and consumer products, including consumer participation in standardization. The winner will be recognized at the U.S. Celebration of World Standards Day, to be held on December 8 in Washington, DC and will receive a $1,500 cash award. The competition is open to individuals in academia, industry, government, and standards developing organizations. Entrants must reside in the U.S., and if employed, they must be employed by a U.S.-based organization. For more information on the rules of the competition and how to submit a paper, visit the SES website.

New ANAB Scholarship Announced

The ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB) has launched the ANAB Emerging Professionals Scholarship, a new award supporting students pursuing careers in quality, safety, science, accreditation, standards, and credentialing. Applications are open now through November 6, 2026. Click here for details.

ASTM International Awards Four $10,000 Scholarships to 2026 Graduate Students

ASTM recently awarded four $10,000 scholarships to graduate students for their studies in fields where technical standards play a crucial role. To learn more about this year’s awardees and their research, click here. ASTM offers several scholarship and grant opportunities each year, including a Professor of the Year award. They also offer free memberships for undergraduate and graduate students who have opportunities to learn first-hand about the standards development process, network with technical experts, and participate in standards discussions. Visit here to learn more about ASTM’s academic outreach programs: https://www.astm.org/membership-participation/academic-outreach/for-students.

ANSI 2026 Student Paper Competition Winners Announced

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and its Committee on Education (CoE) recently announced the winners of the 2026 Student Paper Competition. This year’s theme was Imagine a World Without Standards. Participants were asked to explore how technical standards quietly support everyday life and to imagine what would happen without them. The annual competition is part of ANSI's ongoing effort to build awareness of standards and conformance among the students who will one day help develop and apply them. You can read the winning submissions at https://www.ansi.org/standards-news/all-news/9-11-26-ansi-announces-winners-of-2026-student-paper-competition.

NIST Awardee Case Western Reserve University Seeks Collaborators for Case Studies

CWRU’s Case School of Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Kelvin Smith Library have completed their 2021 NIST SCO CD CAP project. The goal of the project was to develop standards education modules centered on case studies involving quality systems, biocompatibility, and software development for medical devices. They have developed lesson plans, tutorials, videos, homework assignments, and four case studies, including a moot court exercise on product liability that can be integrated into introductory biomedical engineering courses, senior design capstone courses, and graduate BioDesign curriculum. An impressive video of CWRU students’ moot court exercise can be viewed here, and the curriculum is available at https://osf.io/79s6z/. Looking ahead, PI’s Colin Drummond, Daniela Solomon, and Matthew Williams are actively seeking partners from standards development organizations and industry to co-develop additional case studies that will enhance the awareness, knowledge, and importance of industry standards. Please contact the PI’s directly for more information.

NIST Awardees Publish Book on Standards Information Literacy

Credit: PURDUE INFORMATION LITERACY HANDBOOKS

A new publication, Teaching and Collecting Technical Standards: A Handbook for Librarians and Educators, is available for free download or purchase from Purdue University Press. Comprising 13 chapters, the handbook provides background information on standards and information on how to access standards, best practices for developing a useful collection of standards, and integrating standards into the curriculum. Additionally, it includes 14 case studies in many disciplines, including engineering, business, and law. NIST Standards Coordination Office Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program (SCOCD CAP) awardees Margaret Philips, Purdue University, and Daniela Solomon, Case Western Reserve University, are co-authors and co-editors of the book, along with Chelsea Leachman, Washington State University, and Erin Rowley, University of Buffalo. In addition to the chapters and case studies contributed by Ms. Philips, Ms. Solomon, and several others, the handbook also includes a case study on Environmental Engineering, written by NIST SCOCD CAP awardees Jennifer Schneider and Lisa Greenwood, Rochester Institute of Technology, and a case study on Transportation Engineering, co-written by NIST SCOCD CAP awardee Angelo Lampousis, City University of New York. The full table of contents is available here. Purdue University Press also published an interview with the four co-authors and -editors about their new book and the growing demand to incorporate standards education into the classroom. 

Penn Program on Regulation launches a new curricular resource site that showcases the importance of voluntary codes and standards

January 12, 2023

The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Program on Regulation (PPR) recently launched its Voluntary Codes and Standards website: Codes-and-Standards.org. The content includes original teaching guides, case studies, and video interviews with experts that detail the important ways that voluntary codes and standards interact with the law and public policy. All of the materials needed to support one or more class modules are provided and can be used to integrate the study of codes and standards into the curriculum of core and elective courses in law schools and public policy graduate programs. The modules are organized into five segments: (1) Introduction to Codes and Standards, which provides a general overview that instructors can use to supplement the other modules or adapt to meet any instructional need; (2) Standard Essential Patents, drawing on a case study of an intellectual property dispute between Microsoft and Motorola; (3) Incorporation by Reference, the process by which federal agencies build the standards developed by nongovernmental standard-setting organizations into their public regulations; (4) Risk Regulation, incorporating a lesson about private standards into the teaching of the Supreme Court’s Benzene decision; and (5) Federal Preemption, drawing on case studies of federal energy efficiency standards and state and local green building code requirements. Each module also includes selected readings, teaching notes, slides, supplemental videos, and discussion questions. This project, led by Cary Coglianese, PPR Director, was funded under the NIST Standards Services Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program.

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Launches NIST-Funded Project to Develop Standards Education Curricula

November 28, 2022

RIT was recently awarded a grant to develop curricular modules on infrastructure improvement and resilience to introduce undergraduate and graduate students to standards. The modules will include case studies and simulation exercises that can be used in traditional classroom and online courses. The new curricula will be integrated into RIT degree programs in construction management, environmental sustainability, health and safety, and computing security, as well as smart grid and architectural engineering curriculum at partnering institutions. 

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