When the vessel “King Gizzard” lined up for the final round of NJIT’s STEM Success Academy boat race, the stakes weren’t high in the traditional sense — just a stream of air and a small plastic boat floating on a narrow water track in NJIT’s Makerspace. But what was at play was far bigger: creativity, collaboration and the confidence to think differently.

Since 2011, NJIT alumnus Marc K. Raoul ’10, an emergency management specialist for FEMA, has traveled across the U.S. and its territories to help communities recover and rebuild following hurricanes, floods and pandemics. A veteran of Hurricanes Sandy (2012), Irma (2017) and Maria (2017), he’s been a damage assessor, a disaster recovery planner and a proposal reviewer for towns and cities in New Jersey, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, Missouri, California, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Three student veterans at NJIT were among the first to be awarded a new scholarship administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. The Edith Nourse Rogers STEM Scholarship, named for the long-serving Massachusetts congresswoman and steadfast advocate for veterans, provides up to nine months of additional post-9/11 GI Bill benefits, up to $30,000. Recipients must be enrolled in a STEM degree program or seeking a teaching certificate.

NJIT Meets NJ Reverse Transfer Sept. 1 Deadline

New Jersey community college students who transfer to the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) before earning a degree or certificate will find it easier to receive a credential retroactively under a new alliance between NJIT and the National Student Clearinghouse. The initiative, known as Reverse Transfer, has the potential to help thousands of New Jersey students and students from other states who transferred to New Jersey earn their associate’s degree.