Orangeburg, SC: Waste Management Symposia on December 14 presented the first $10,000 check to South Carolina State University as part an increased focus on funding scholarships at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and at institutions near Department of Energy (DOE) sites.
WMS Board Member Sandra Fairchild, who serves as Director, Project Services and Support for Savannah River Remediation, presented the check to South Carolina State President James E. Clark during the December 14 ceremony at the University’s Orangeburg, S.C. campus.
“Our relationship with South Carolina State is an important one as we increase the focus on supporting the leaders of tomorrow in the nuclear industry,” Fairchild said. “Funding graduate and undergraduate scholarships is one of the most powerful ways we can help.”
South Carolina State University is the only HBCU in the country that offers a four-year nuclear engineering degree program.
WMS annually convenes the Waste Management Conference in Phoenix, which last year attracted more than 2,300 attendees from 35 countries to participate in the world’s largest conference on radioactive waste management and disposal, decommissioning, packaging and transportation, facility siting and site remediation.
Beginning this year, WMS, through its charitable arm the Roy G. Post Foundation, will dedicate the majority of its scholarship funding to students at colleges and universities near DOE sites, with an initial focus on Hanford in Washington State, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, and the Idaho site.
Roy G. Post, a professor at the University of Arizona, was the founding chief executive of WM Symposia. The Roy G. Post Foundation is a non-profit organization formed by his students, peers and protégés to provide scholarships to students to develop careers in the safe management of nuclear materials and to participate in the WM Conference.
Since its inception, the Post Foundation has awarded scholarships to more than 150 undergraduate and graduate students from all around the world. For more information on the Post Foundation scholarships and the Waste Management Conference, visit www.wmsym.org.