Juan Arratia

Universidad Metropolitana | San Juan, PR | 2006

Juan Arratia Portrait Photo

The official biography below was current at the time of the award. Awardees may choose to provide their latest biographical information on their profile page.

Juan F. Arratia, is the director and principal investigator for the Model Institutions for Excellence (MIE) project at Universidad Metropolitana (Puerto Rico). MIE is a program funded by NSF and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which, over the past 11 years, has demonstrated successful strategies for recruiting underrepresented minority students to science and engineering fields and supporting their successful completion of science degrees. At Universidad Metropolitana, Arratia has recruited unprecedented numbers of Hispanic students into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields; increased the retention of STEM majors from the freshman to sophomore year; and given these students comprehensive career advising. Among the help he has provided to more than 500 undergraduate Hispanic STEM students and more than 1,800 pre-college Hispanic students is providing them with summer research experiences in the U.S. and abroad.