College Education Goals

Advanced Courses
MATC plans to develop advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in safety and system risk analysis. The courses will be made available to all students in the Region 7 consortium through interactive, distance education methods. In addition, this initiative will be integrated into the appropriate outreach activities to reach practicing engineers.

Summer Internship
MATC plans to offer a summer internship program for the undergraduates to 1) provide critical exposure to the transportation profession and 2) attract undergraduate students toward graduate academic programs in transportation. MATC has had a successful internship program for over 10 years that will be used as the nucleus for this activity. Over 115 undergraduates have been involved in the MATC summer intern program since 1995. These students have been placed with various private firms and public sector transportation agencies throughout Region 7, and many have gone on to successful transportation careers.

Advanced Institute
MATC plans to create an Advanced Institute (AI) for Safety and Risk for graduate students that will be designed to attract U.S. students to the transportation field. The AI program will have two major components:

1. A graduate course is to be offered every summer at UNL. Eligible graduate students from all MATC consortium universities will attend the AI program for one week at the beginning of summer semester where they will work with mentors who will be practicing transportation professionals from business, state transportation agencies and the USDOT. Together with their mentors, they will identify relevant transportation-related safety issues and possible solutions. The students will spend the semester at their home campuses researching potential solutions - with the aid of their mentors. The students will reconvene at the end of the summer semester to present their results and receive feedback from their mentors. The course will be supervised by a MATC faculty member and the student will receive 3 credit hours of graduate work for this activity at their home university.
2. Fellowships will be used to supplement the students' research assistantship funding. This funding will not replace funding that would normally be provided by sponsoring agencies/entities, but will supplement the students' normal research assistantship in order to attract the best students to the transportation profession. This approach is designed to increase both the quantity and quality of graduate students seeking transportation-related degrees.