Oakland University’s engineering departments received a boost recently, receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The grant, totaling $598,980, will fund 32 Product Lifecycle Management Scholarships for new students. The $4,800 scholarships will be given based on academic skill and financial need. Scholarships may be renewed for up to four years.

The goal of product lifecycle management is to control every phase of production, from marketing through disposal at the end of the item’s shelf life.

Robert Van Til, chair of the industrial and systems engineering department, said that product management is a growing challenge in the engineering field, particularly when it comes to computer software.

“Unfortunately, a lot of these tools won’t talk with each other, they won’t share data,” he said. “The idea behind product lifecycle management is you put a big database to store all the information in the middle of the circle. Right now, it’s a series of disjointed functions and because of that disjointedness there’s a lot of additional costs.”

As an example, a change in the design of a product needs to be communicated immediately with the engineers.

The goal of the scholarships, divided evenly between the mechanical engineering and industrial and systems engineering departments, is to attract students not normally seen in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math — including minorities and women.

Engineering faculty have partnered with Oakland Intermediate School District and the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program to identify potential candidates.

Lorenzo Smith, associate dean of the school of engineering and computer science, said the scholarships are valuable in a couple of ways.

“We’re very interested in promoting education for a wide variety of students who come from all walks of life,” he said. “Overall, we’re just very interested in increasing students’ interests in the STEM fields.”

In order to provide additional support, recipients will receive faculty and industry mentors.

“The goal here with trying to recruit someone to represent the students is to just give them a little resource to help make the navigation through the system a little more straightforward, Van Til said.”

Faculty mentors will help students stay on track academically. Their industry counterparts will show students the workplace side of things and assist in finding internships.

OU will award 16 scholarships in the fall 2012 semester and again in 2013.