LaGuardia CC gets $4.3 million from feds

Christmas came almost a month early to LaGuardia Community College.
The City University of New York (CUNY) school, located in Long Island City, received three federal grants totaling more than $4 million that will go towards encouraging low-income and Hispanic students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“Community colleges like LaGuardia provide millions of Americans with a ladder to success,” said Queens and Manhattan Congressmember Carolyn Maloney, who along with U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer helped secure the funding. “One of the best things the federal government can do is help educate our nation’s young people.”
The $2.25 million grant will allow LaGuardia to partner with Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology that will start a program to help students interested in mechatronics - an emerging field that combines mechanical, electronic and computer engineering - pursue a degree in that field. Faculty from LaGuardia and Vaughn will work with students in the program on projects that will provide them with hands-on experience in the field.
In addition, the second grant will allow LaGuardia to train faculty members on how to adapt a higher level of math instruction to community college students in order to prepare them for different careers in science.
“These two generous grants will allow us to better serve this special student population by strengthening our engineering and math programs and allowing us to launch an ambitious campaign to attract Hispanics and other low-income students to the lucrative fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” said LaGuardia President Dr. Gail Mellow.
Meanwhile, the third federal grant, which totals $282,000, will be put towards LaGuardia’s Emerging Designer’s Unit, which helps identify and train Hispanic design entrepreneurs. The grant will also help fund the construction of two state-of-the-art engineering labs at the college, something that students like 19-year-old mechanical engineering major Jean Paul Duperval II at LaGuardia, is excited about.
“LaGuardia Community College is one of the very rare community colleges where students start to take engineering classes, but we don’t have enough updated equipment,” he said. “I think this is a very great action because I have visited four-year engineering schools and this will allow us to match up with the big engineering colleges.”