The U.S. Department of Labor recently selected the University at Buffalo’s Buffalo-area Engineering Awareness for Minorities (BEAM) as a winner of the 2008 Exemplary Public Interest Contribution Award for promoting equal employment opportunity. Headquartered in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, BEAM is a cooperative educational enrichment program that has been helping prepare teen women and minority youth for careers in science, engineering and architecture. To date, it has worked with more than 10,000 Western New York middle school and high school students who have been motivated to pursue science and engineering degrees at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Read more.