Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Raytheon adds $600K in MathMovesU scholarships

By Mass High Tech Staff

Raytheon Co. has added 30 scholarships of $20,000 each to a program encouraging students enter the fields of science, technology, math and engineering. The defense contractor revised its MathMovesU scholarship program to allow students who have already won a scholarship from the program to be eligible to win one of 30 additional $20,000 merit-based bonus awards if they major in a STEM field at an accredited college. 

Raytheon (NYSE: RTN) also made awards of $1,000 available to 150 middle-school students, who can use the money to attend math and science summer camps or programs, or save it for college. The Waltham-based contracting giant will also donate a $1,000 matching grant to each winning student’s middle school. To apply for a camp scholarship, current middle school students need to create a multimedia submission illustrating how math factors into their favorite pastimes.

Raytheon established the MathMovesU program to encourage interest in STEM as a way of strengthening the pool from which its future work force will come.

Earlier this month, Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems unit, won a $165 million contract from the U.S. Navy to supply 192 MK54 lightweight and 228 MK48 Common Broadband Advanced Sonar System (CBASS) torpedo upgrade kits. The contract calls for engineering and support to be provided as well. Also this month, the defense giant landed a contract worth a potential $679 million for airport surveillance radar systems Under the deal, Raytheon will replace radar facilities at military and civilian airfields for the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration as part of the digital airport surveillance radar system project.

Raytheon reported a 2007 net income of $3.5 billion on revenue of $21.3 billion.