Minority Scholarship Program for Undergraduate Physics Majors

Established in 1980 by APS, this highly successful program is able, as a result of funding from the Campaign, to increase the number of scholarships awarded annually to its highly qualified pool of applicants. The program supports African-American, Hispanic American, or Native American U.S. citizen or permanent residents who are majoring or planning to major in physics, and who are a high school senior, college freshman, or sophomore.

The program consists of three support components:

1. a monetary grant for students which can be renewed once;
   
2. a faculty mentor for each student who helps to provide advice on career choices, course selection etc;
   
3. a small monetary grant to the student's host physics department to be used to promote and support minority student activities.
   

To date 465 scholarships have been awarded.

Not only is this program very successful in retaining bright minority students in physics at the undergraduate level, but an impressive 20% have also gone one to earn their Ph.D. in physics.

Additional information can be found at http://www.aps.org/programs/minorities/honors/scholarship