A group of your peers left the State Capitol last week with a spring in their step after finding allies in a number of respected and powerful senators and assemblymen on issues affecting Rensselaer’s student body. The students are members of our Student Advocacy Corps—an organization the Student Senate commissioned last spring to represent students on a state and national level. You may remember their campus-wide “phone-in” campaign last year that allowed students to voice their opinion on a slated $12 billion cut out of student loan programs in 2007 as part of the Deficit Reduction Act. This year they have been particularly focused on addressing the looming “quiet crisis” by calling for greater assistance to students pursuing engineering and science degrees—a very unique message that looks more deeply at the issues facing our nation other than just student aid.
With the help of the Assembly Higher Education Committee Chairman Ron Canestrari and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, our message continues to echo through the halls of the Capitol. Both have served our district well, and we are privileged to have had the opportunity to work with their staff. We are particularly grateful for their efforts to prevent cuts to the New York State Tuition Assistance Program this year, helping over 1,000 RPI students attend college. For years, Assemblyman Canestrari has fought to protect TAP—the most generous need-based student grant program in the country—and for that, we are grateful.
This year in Governor Pataki’s $110.7 billion executive budget, he called for some very impressive initiatives to bolster the competitiveness and innovation of New York State by building on the Centers of Excellence and Empire Zones programs. But our student advocates have been even more impressed by the Republican Senate majority’s and Assembly minority’s efforts to build upon this foundation in higher education through new programs that will lower the financial barriers to a science and engineering education. This is especially important at a time when the number of American college students who receive science degrees has fallen to 17th in the world.
Assemblyman Tedisco and his colleagues have introduced “The New Edison Project” to reverse this trend. One of the most exciting components that the Student Advocacy Corps supports is its loan forgiveness program for students in math, science, and engineering who choose to work in New York upon graduation. Both students and the state will benefit since currently as many as 70 percent of RPI’s graduates leave New York to work elsewhere.
We are also pleased that Tedisco’s New Edison Project aims to provide an additional $500 E-TAP award for math, science and engineering majors, and to make grant funding available to graduate students to pursue scientific research related to their graduate or doctoral studies. These are all great foundational steps to assist the next generation of scientists and engineers.
On behalf of the student body, I would like to thank Senator Leibell, Senator Fuschillo, Senator Maltese, Assemblyman Colton, and Assemblyman Tedisco for meeting with us and supporting education in New York and the future of America through student aid programs that support New York’s science and engineering students. You each have made a tremendous commitment that is truly applauded by the students at Rensselaer. Please fight on.
