The Women In Aerospace (WIA) Foundation is now accepting applications for The WIA Scholarship & The WIA Foundation – AIAA Digital Avionics Scholarship for the 2014 school year.
(See the bottom of this post for a note on the accompanying picture that I’ve chosen, which is my own and not that of the WIA***)
See the website here for full details, and download the application here
Fro the website: “The WIA Foundation is pleased to provide scholarships to women interested in a career in the aerospace field to pursue higher education degrees in engineering, math or science. One or more awards will be given each year to a rising junior or senior in college, to be applied during the upcoming academic year.
To be eligible for the WIA Foundation Scholarship, an applicant must be interested in pursuing a career in the aerospace field and be a rising junior or senior working towards a bachelor’s degree in engineering, math or science. An applicant must have completed at least two and a half academic years of full-time college work at the time of application and must be currently enrolled in an accredited college or university in the United States or its territories, and plan to be enrolled in the subsequent academic year. Each applicant must have a college grade point average of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. Applicants must be female of any nationality.
Applications will be available on or about November 1 for the subsequent academic year.
The annual Scholarship timeline is as follows:
October 1: Announcement and call for scholarship applicants
February 25: Applications are due
March 14: Scholarship recipient announcement
October/November: Scholarship recipient honored at WIA Awards Banquet in Washington, DC.
To contribute to the WIA Foundation or for further information, please contact the WIA Foundation at [email protected] or 202-547-0229.”
***Although I usually use Creative Commons images in my blog posts, this is a picture I took myself, of a cross-stitch I also made myself. It makes me think of women in aeronautics because the original pattern it came with (given to me as a gift) was of a short-haired astronaut. I intentionally added the long hair to make it feminine. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I feel that in addition to it making the astronaut appear to be a woman, there’s also a double-meaning reflecting that I, as a space professional, also happily enjoy the odd spot of a ‘traditionally feminine’ activity like cross-stitching. Of course this is an activity that only some women enjoy (and additionally that some men also enjoy), but point being that we should embrace aspirations of both genders in space, and also challenge the dismissal of some hobbies over others on a gendered basis. (Cross-stitching could be a good, focused use of time in long stints in space… I’m thinking of “Sam Bell” meticulously carving out his home town in miniature to pass time in the film Moon… Hmmm…) Anyway, these last musings after the asterisk, as well as the image, are my own and not that of the WIA.
