Dr. Herb (Iiisaurri) Schroeder, founder and executive director of the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP), was selected to receive the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) 2009 Founder's Award, also known as the Reginald H. Jones Award. Dr. Schroeder accepted the award at NACME's 35th Anniversary Awards Dinner and Celebration in New York City on Sept. 29, 2009.

NACME, established in 1974, created the Founder's Award to recognize individuals who showed exemplary commitment and service in support of NACME's mission. The award comes with a $10,000 gift to be given to a non-profit of Dr. Schroeder's choice. Read more.

Dr. Schroeder started ANSEP in 1995 with one engineering student. ANSEP is a longitudinal program that works with students from the time they're sophomores in high school all the way into graduate school. It's designed to increase university recruitment and retention rates through hands-on high school outreach initiatives, rigorous summer bridging programs, focused academic learning communities, organized student cohorts, networks of peer and professional mentors, community-based learning, professional internships, undergraduate research projects and graduate school programs.

In 2001, Dr. Schroeder led the formation of the Pacific Alliance with the goal of replicating ANSEP at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Hawai'i Manoa and the University of Washington. The Alliance was recently expanded to include South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Idaho and University of North Dakota. ANSEP and the Pacific Alliance are national models for recruitment and retention programs.

For more information about NACME, visit their Web site. For more information about ANSEP, visit their Web site.