A deep dive into the newly established scholarship program by the North American Car and Truck of the Year (NACTOI) in partnership with the SAE Foundation, aimed at supporting aspiring automotive journalists and engineers. The episode features insights from industry veterans Johan Miller and Jamie Ferguson, who discuss the importance of promoting opportunities in automotive journalism and design. With a $100,000 endowment, the scholarship will award $5,000 annually, encouraging students to explore careers in a rapidly evolving media landscape. Listeners will learn about eligibility criteria, application processes, and the significance of this initiative.
In this episode, we break down a new $100,000 educational initiative from the North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle of the Year (NACTOY) in partnership with the SAE Foundation to fund the SAE–NACTOY Automotive Journalism, Design, and Engineering Innovation Scholarships, launching in the 2026–27 academic year.
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"...which were the Dutch Charger for both variants, the electric and the gas car or the gas engine."
The Dodge Charger is a large car that comes in different versions, including ones that run on gas and ones that are electric. It's popular for its strong performance and sporty look.
The Dodge Charger is a full-size sedan known for its powerful performance and muscular design. It is available in both gas and electric variants, appealing to a wide range of consumers.
"...the Ford Maverick Lobo pickup truck, six years in a row for Ford, the win..."
The Ford Maverick is a small pickup truck that is known for being affordable and useful for many tasks. It's been winning awards for several years in a row.
The Ford Maverick is a compact pickup truck that has gained popularity for its affordability and versatility. It has been recognized for its strong sales performance in recent years.
"...and then the Hyundai Palisade that the Hyundai Group in the past few years seems to be winning every year..."
The Hyundai Palisade is a medium-sized SUV that can fit a lot of people and has many modern features. It's been popular and has won awards recently.
The Hyundai Palisade is a midsize SUV that offers spacious seating and a range of modern features. It has been well-received in the market, contributing to Hyundai's success in recent years.
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Welcome to the AI Auto podcast with Javier Moda, your front-row seat to where artificial
intelligence meets horsepower. Where today we're back here in the computer, we're not driving a
car, we're just talking with two very important people from one from Nacto where I'm part of the
jury panel for more than 10 years. I think it is more than that, I believe. And Johan Miller,
how Johan, how are you? I'm great Javier, good to see you or talk to you anyways.
How long you been at the Nactoi? Oh, I've been a juror on Nactoi for probably 15 years now I think.
I used to be at Forbes and that's when I joined the jury when I was at Forbes. And I know I've
been at Axios for eight years, so it's been quite a while. I know, so maybe we should start by explaining
what Nactoi is because a lot of people don't even know and we in the industry, any industry is the
same, I think we put like these short names to organizations that people don't know. So it's
the North American car and utility vehicle of the year awards, right? So we just awarded the
winners for this year which were the Dutch Charger for both variants, the electric and the gas car
or the gas engine. And then the Ford Maverick Lobo pickup truck, six years in a row for Ford,
the win, and then the Hyundai Pali say that the Hyundai Group in the past few years seems to be
winning every year. Same as Ford with the pickup trucks, but anyway. And then at the same time,
you announced, I mean, you've been working on this other project that we're going to talk about
today for a couple of years, you just were telling me. So tell us about it and tell us about our
guess because I mean, this is really important. I wanted to share the information with as many
people as possible because this is really important. Yeah, well, I appreciate that. So
the North American car and truck of the year jury is 50 journalists who are, you know, spend all
year driving cars and trucks and, you know, awarding the best ones with trophies to celebrate
great design. And we over the years, we've collected some money, both from our dues and from,
you know, we have trophies that are presented to these companies and sometimes they'll buy
extra copies of the trophy to put on their shelves. So we were like, we need to spend more time,
you know, supporting charities. And for a few years, we had sort of random donations to different
favorite organizations, charities that we supported, but it became clear that we really
should do something more deliberate with our money. And so Jeff Gilbert, who is the current
president of the Nactoy jury, asked me to head up a committee that would look at the idea of
setting up a scholarship endowment. And I had done this once before for a different journalist
organization. So I think that's why he asked me to help out on this. And it was, you know,
we were trying to figure out how could we support other journalists who might want to get into
automotive journalism. And we wanted to make it as open and available to as many students as we
could. But we all knew that most of us in automotive journalism didn't start out that way. We kind of
stumbled into it. My first life I was a sports writer for a long time. The NFL, everything.
Right. I fell into this by accident, but that's another story.
Well, that's it. Most of us have. We don't really even know that there's a field for
automotive journalism. So this was our objective. But we also thought about the idea of rewarding,
you know, aspiring car designers and engineers. So as we began to think about how to award these,
how to structure this scholarship program, the question was, who can we partner with
that would be able to manage this scholarship and be the administrator for it? Because a
bunch of journalists don't have time or knowledge on how to how to manage this. So that's what brought
me to SAE, which is the current name for something that used to be called the Society of Automotive
Engineers. And they have a foundation that is dedicated to education. And I was put in
touch with Jamie Ferguson, who is also on the line with us today. And I'll let her describe what the
SAE Foundation is. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Joanne. It's great to talk with you both today.
We're so excited to launch this scholarship. I think, Kaby, I think many of your listeners
might be familiar with SAE. I think we're a lot of car people, truck people who might be listening
to your podcast. And so I think people are familiar with SAE is kind of that global organization of
engineers. And our purpose really overall is to connect and educate, you know, engineers,
technical experts and volunteers and mobility professionals all about, you know, enabling
that safe, clean and accessible mobility solutions. And so as executive director of the SAE Foundation,
I oversee our charitable arm, and we raise funds to support SAE's pre-K to university STEM
education programs and awards and scholarships. And so with our scholarship program, we have
thousands of students who apply for scholarships every year. And we only have about, I say only,
but we offer about 20 different scholarships, which is awesome. We give, we give, yeah, we get,
we get so many more applicants than we have scholarships available to give out though.
And so when Joanne and Jeff and Nectoy came to us with this wonderful opportunity and this generous
offer, we were thrilled to partner with them to be able to offer another scholarship to these,
to these students who are so talented and so driven and they want to pursue careers in engineering
or other areas, in this case, automotive journalism. But last year we gave out about $300,000 to 52
students, both undergrad and graduate. And with the Nectoy scholarship, we're going to be able to add,
you know, two more scholarships to that portfolio. And so Joanne might want to talk a little bit
more about the actual scholarship, but it's going to allow for us to award a scholarship to somebody
pursuing automotive design and somebody pursuing automotive journalism, which I think is really,
really cool. Even though I'm going to let me interrupt you there, even though the our side of
the industry, the media is like in trouble now, because I think there's a lot of outlets closing
layoffs and all that. But also, there are tools like this Zoom call, for example, we recorded
this podcast, it's digital, so everybody has access to that. So I think people have to learn.
And the reason I wanted to, to expose this to more people is because a few years ago,
more than maybe 10, 15 years ago, I was working at a TV network and they were offering Harvard,
Harvard scholarships for Hispanics. And people didn't apply for it because they didn't know they
were available. So that's why I think it's very important to share this information because
there are great organizations, not to use one of them, but there are so many that put out these
programs and then people just don't know. I mean, but apparently you don't have that problem. You
said you have more applicants than scholarships. We do, but I appreciate the opportunity to be
able to promote this because it's new. And so actually, it's a great time to have this conversation
because our scholarship portal is open right now. It's open just through the end of February.
So there's a couple more weeks, a few more weeks left for students and parents to get
online and apply for the scholarship. But we want to make sure that people are aware of this
particular scholarship. They might be aware of the other ones we've had for many years,
but this is brand new. And so we want to make sure that we have a good number of applicants
applying and make sure that people are aware, like you said, that this opportunity is available to
them. So Joanne, can you explain a little more who can apply for it, how it's going to work and
how much money they get or how the whole thing works for the applicants?
Yeah. So NACTOI gave an endowment, $100,000 to the SAE Foundation. And that is sort of an
opportunity to just have this scholarship go on in perpetuity, right? And the interest earned on
this fund will be able to pay for the scholarships every year. So the money's not expected to ever
run out, which is fantastic. Yeah. And we should give a scholarship for financial advice because
that sounds pretty cool too. Well, you know, and this is all SAE's expertise, quite honestly. This
is how they run this. And this is why we work with them because they know how to do this.
And so the scholarship, the endowment will spin off enough money to give about, if it's okay,
I'll say roughly $5,000 each year. Oh, okay. And we're splitting that between two different
scholarships. So imagine $2,500 each, roughly. One will be for journalism students who have an
interest in automotive industry. And the other one will be for design students who want to design
the next great car that could one day win one of our Nactoi awards. And we've made it flexible
enough so that if we don't have enough applicants in one or the other category that we could have,
you know, give two design students an award or two journalism students. So we're trying to build
in flexibility, certainly in the beginning, as we start to get the word out on this. And
it's eligible. The students who are eligible are both undergraduate students and graduate students.
You have to have a good GPA. I think it's a 3.0 or better. You can double check the criteria on
the website. And Jamie will recite that website for us in a minute. I'm going to put you on to
that, Jamie. And they'll have to write a couple essays in terms of the journalism one. They have
to explain why they think they might be interested in the automotive industry. And also, they have
to talk a little bit about, as you mentioned, how much media is changing and what excites them
about new media. Because this is not necessarily a scholarship for people with ink all over their
fingers. This is people who might be doing podcasts like you are or YouTube reviews or
Instagram posts, whatever it is. We understand that journalism is changing. So is the auto industry
for that matter. And we want to have, make sure that there's a whole generation of people who
can write or share that information with the public as it evolves. And that's accurate as possible
too, because I mean, there's a lot of things that we see posted on social media and say,
oh, is that really true? And is that AI? Is that how it's generated? But anyway,
from the media side, it's interesting in that aspect. But for the engineering part, which
cannot be lied, I mean, I'm not a good as matter at all. But like in engineering, things have to
work perfectly, right, Jamie? So you said you have like about 20 different scholarships in the
program or your program. Can you explain that please? We do. We have a variety of scholarships
available. Most are targeted to students who are pursuing careers in engineering or related science
degrees. And so the writing one is new for us, the journalism one, but we're excited to offer that.
But we have some that are focused on mechanical engineering, some that are focused on,
you know, just a variety of topics, some that are very open to any student who is pursuing,
like I said, a related science type degree. They're available for both undergrad students,
so high school seniors who are applying, you know, to go to school and enter as a freshman,
there are plenty of scholarships for them. We have scholarships available for upperclassmen as well.
So there's a wide variety available, like I said, that scholarship portal is open right now,
through February 28th. And for those who want to apply, you can visit se.org backslash scholarships.
And you'll see the whole list of the scholarships, the descriptions, the criteria.
Like I said, they're all open right now for application. They all have different criteria
that you can read on the website. But I encourage folks who are interested to visit se.org
slash scholarships and apply before February 28th.
Okay, we'll post that, learning about the new social media or the new media.
Let's, we'll post that everywhere where we do this or the social media and all that.
But like recently, Jim Fairley, CEO from Ford, said that there's like a very, a shortage of
engineers now that they were posting $150,000 salary jobs and nobody was applying.
So how, what do you see from that, from your side? Like you said, you have more applicants,
so what does this connect there?
Yeah, no, that's a good point. We do have a lot of applicants who are pursuing engineering
and other science related degrees. But that skills gap in that crisis in engineering and in
STEM fields is real. And that's really why the SAE Foundation exists is to try to provide that
education to young students, inspire them early so that they hopefully will opt in to a STEM career
and hopefully pursue a career in engineering. I think with skilled trades in particular,
I think that there's still a perception issue out there. And a lot of young people don't really
know what it means to go into skilled trades right now. And I think there's maybe a lack of
awareness that there are these really great high paying jobs. A lot of young people might think
of it as kind of that old dirty factory work that maybe their grandparents did or something,
but it's really different. We've got EVs and battery technology and all this really cool stuff going on.
And so I think trying to create that awareness is important. And like I said, really, for me,
it's inspiring kids early and letting them know that they can be successful in science and math
and that it is relevant to their futures. The data shows if we don't inspire them early, they
simply dismiss math and science as relevant to them. So it's really important to get them
some hands on programming as early as we can. And then with partners like NACTOI providing
the financial resources so that we can provide these scholarships. Hopefully we can help solve
that problem that Mr. Farley was talking about. Yeah, that's great. And I'm going to give my own
opinion, apply for the engineering scholarship for the journalistic. Well, because it's this is
tough. And engineering is going to be there forever. Journalism in some way will be, I guess,
John Wright. But I think engineers have more secure paths for a career. Well, I think that,
you know, there's a need for authentic expertise when it comes to evaluating cars, talking about
the auto industry. As you mentioned, there's a lot of AI, there's a lot of junk out there.
And it's really, really important that the humans are trained and able to provide the
expertise that people can rely on. So I am not giving up at all on journalism. I am a big believer
that it's evolving, but that the expertise is more important than ever. And so, you know, I'm
excited about the idea that we might be able to inspire some people who, you know, want to go into
communications or journalism in the automotive sector. I think it's a great field. And, you know,
they just have to be willing and able to keep evolving just like the cars they write about.
Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you very much for your time. And we're going to post this as I said,
and Jamie, maybe you let us know when the application process finished and you let us know
who won them so we can talk to them too and see what the experience is. So thank you very much.
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you.
At Strayer University, we help students like you go from will I to why not. For over 130 years,
we've been innovating higher education to make it more affordable, accessible, and attainable
so you can reach your goals. Go from thinking, can I? To yes, I can. And keep striving. Visit
Strayer.edu to learn more. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Chevin as
many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street North in Arlington, Virginia.
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