What does scientific impact mean to you? Is it a world free of life-threatening diseases? Or a world so richly automated that any action can take place with the utterance of a few words? Or maybe a world where distance and time are no longer an issue, we can be anywhere at any time?
At the National GEM Consortium (GEM), we envision a world made better through science. We see all your dreams of scientific impact and strive to make them all come through. We see innovation and believe that one of the best ways to achieve that innovation is by creating high-performing diverse groups of scientists and technologists.
The challenge we face is that not everyone holds a seat at the table to contribute to this vision.
The National GEM Consortium is a 46-year-old non-profit that has been providing fellowships to underrepresented minorities (URMs) to allow them to pursue their Masters and PhDs in STEM fields for free at the top universities in the country. Over the decades, we have supported thousands of Masters and PhDs students many of whom have gone on to make a significant impact. Our alums consist of deans of engineering schools, provosts and presidents of universities, some of whom have already been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. Couple that academic impact with alums from the industry (such as Ursula Burns, former chair and CEO of Xerox) as well as successful entrepreneurs (some of whom are currently on Forbes 30 under 30 list) and you can see that the legacy of success of the GEM model has been carefully documented over close to 50 years. In early 2022, GEM received a Presidential Award from the White House for its impact in STEM over the decades.
Yet in spite of all of this success, GEM still only supports 50% of the applicants that should be supported. That means we lose half of the opportunities to contribute to innovation. Help us make that change and support a GEM fellow today, because in spite of the uncertainty in the world, we at the GEM Consortium, Still See Scientific Impact.