About GCSP

The Arizona State University Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) was founded in 2011 and contains over 350 undergraduate students across all levels, and 127 alumni to date. ASU’s GCSP is one of 100 GCSPs across the international GCSP Network. 

Students in the Grand Challenges Scholars Program complete curricular and co-curricular experiences to achieve five competencies: Talent (research or creative project experience), Multidisciplinary, Viable Business/Entrepreneurship, Multicultural, and Social consciousness (through service learning). Students develop their own path to achieve these competencies while being mentored by faculty and staff throughout their undergraduate career. Students in the program focus their experiences on the 14 Grand Challenges of Engineering through the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering themes of health, sustainability, security, and joy of living.

Fulton students who complete the program will achieve the national recognition of being a Grand Challenges Scholar, endorsed by both ASU and the NAE, and will be uniquely prepared to collaborate and succeed in a trans-disciplinary and global environment.

About the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering

The National Academy of Engineering in 2007 brought together a panel of leading people in academia, policy, and business with the charge to identify a small number of grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century. This interdisciplinary group concluded that the following 14 areas would be the Grand Challenges of Engineering in the 21st century:

• Make solar energy economical
• Provide energy from fusion
• Develop carbon sequestration methods
• Manage the nitrogen cycle
• Provide access to clean water
• Restore and improve urban infrastructure
• Advance health informatics
• Engineer better medicines
• Reverse-engineer the brain
• Prevent nuclear terror
• Secure cyberspace
• Enhance virtual reality
• Advance personalized learning
• Engineer the tools of scientific discovery

Learn more about the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering.

These 14 NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering represent the NAE’s vision for Engineering in the 21st century: “Continuation of life on the planet, making our world more sustainable, secure, healthy, and joyful.”\

About the GCSP Network 

The Grand Challenges Scholars Program was founded in 2008 and endorsed by the National Academy of Engineering in 2009. Since then, more than 90 institutions across the world have each established their own GCSP. The GCSP Network is a community of students, alumni, faculty, and staff at these GCSP institutions around the world focused on preparing and supporting interdisciplinary globally minded leaders to solve global challenges facing society today. 

Learn more about the GCSP Network.