Dear Participants and Guests,

It is our distinct pleasure to welcome you to our Seventh Annual North Carolina Alliance to Create Opportunity through Education (NC OPT-ED) Alliance Day event, scheduled for Friday, September 26, 2008 at the Greensboro, North Carolina Coliseum Complex Center.  The theme for the 2008 Alliance Day is “Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics: Inspiring Greatness for the 21st Century.”  Alliance Day is sponsored by the NC Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) and the NC Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Programs (NC-LSAMP).  This North Carolina Alliance has a formal network including all other NSF-HRD supported underrepresented minority (URM) programs in North Carolina:  the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP), Center for Research Excellence in Science and Technology Program (CREST), and the North Carolina Math Science Educational Network (NC MSEN), a K-12 program with sites at nine college campuses across the state.  We have collaborated with the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) as an external partner.  PARI is an institute which offers teachers and students in grades 8-12 a unique, live, hands-on inquiry based approach to learning through internet control of a 4.6 meter radio telescope as well as astronomy/engineering challenges to our undergraduate and graduate students.    

The OPT-ED Alliance Day conference is a one-day interactive conference that serves as a forum to exhibit the research of undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented groups in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and the social, behavioral and economic science (SBE) fields.  In addition, emphasis is placed on the attendance of middle and high school students who are our future pioneers in the STEM/SBE fields, and they along with their teachers and parents are invited to participate in the conference.  The event includes poster and oral research presentations, student and faculty panels, recruiting fair and special-topic breakout workshops.  The conference is also accessible to participants with disabilities.  Our Sixth Annual NC OPT-ED Alliance Day conference was held on September 28, 2007, and was attended by over 800 students, staff, faculty and parents.

 
We would be honored to have you join us at the Seventh Annual NC OPT-ED Alliance Day conference.  The Alliance prides itself on being one of the premier STEM/SBE conferences, as such, it provides an opportunity for students to sharpen their skills in poster and oral presentations as well as to gather information from recruiters and participate in professionally taught workshops.  

 
Again, we are looking forward to seeing you at Alliance Day.  If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact our Program Manager and Alliance Coordinator, Larry Campbell via email at lecamp@email.unc.edu or (919) 843-6903. 

 

Sincerely,
THE NC OPT-ED ALLIANCE PLANNING COMMITTEE