Washington, D.C. — Terri Shaw, chief operating officer for the Office of Federal Student Aid, Jim Manning, acting assistant secretary for postsecondary education and Holly Kuzmich, deputy chief of staff for policy to Secretary Spellings today briefed reporters on the July 1 availability of the new Academic Competitiveness and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grants. These grants provide further incentive for students to take more challenging courses in high school and to pursue college majors that are in high demand in the global economy, such as science, math, technology, engineering and critical foreign languages.

Following are excerpts from today's call:

"July 1 is an important day for America's students—Starting July 1, Pell-eligible students can begin applying for new Academic Competitiveness Grants and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grants that provide $790 million in funding for the 2006-07 academic year and $4.5 billion over the next five years." — Terri Shaw

"For America to remain the world leader in innovation, our children—whether they want to be auto mechanics or scientists—must have math, science and critical language skills. In developing these grants, we realized just how badly our country needs students to have these skills." — Terri Shaw

"As the secretary has already indicated, she wants to keep moving the ball forward and keep increasing high school rigor as much as possible. Especially as states across the country, at least many of them, are in the midst of increasing their graduation requirements and really introducing more rigor in high school." — Holly Kuzmich

"As our world grows more competitive, America must run faster and break new ground, just as we always have. These new programs align student financial aid with some of the President's national priorities around math, science and critical languages and will help to encourage more students to take rigorous courses and pursue these challenging disciplines to help ensure our nation's economic competitiveness." — Terri Shaw

"We outlined the set of course requirements that would be available to students in all 50 states and available to students in both public and private schools.... We're pleased to report that we're going to be able to recognize additional options in 37 states. We are working through notifying states as we speak on the options that are final and that will be available to them under this program for the 2006-2007 school year." — Holly Kuzmich

"The thing to note for SMART Grants is that kids don't have to do anything to receive SMART Grants. We know who's Pell-eligible and schools will be verifying students based on the majors that we already identified for this program and schools will be going through the records and drawing down funds for those students. So those qualified students don't have to do a thing to sign up." — Holly Kuzmich

For a fact sheet on Academic Competitiveness and National SMART Grants, please visit: http://www.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/competitiveness/ac-smart2.html

Students may find additional information and determine their eligibility for Academic Competitiveness and National SMART Grants at http://federalstudentaid.ed.gov

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