New STEM program at Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin will administer two scholarship programs aimed at boosting the technology workforce, including a new effort that will provide aid to high school and college students pursuing vocational and trade degrees.

At the same time the defense giant announced a new program to award 150 scholarships of as much as $6,600 to recipients across the country, it also renewed its four-year STEM scholarship program. That program will award 200 scholarships worth $10,000 this year.

The scholarship programs are a strategy to combat what has become the technology industry’s biggest vulnerability: a workforce shortage.

“We recognize the urgent need to address our nation’s skills gap by encouraging, attracting and developing the next generation of workers in science, technology, engineering and math,” Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson said in a news release.

It will “develop the skills of workers who want to work in advanced manufacturing but do not choose to go to a four-year college,” she said.

The STEM scholarship program targets undergraduate and high school students who plan to pursue a degree in engineering or computer science and demonstrate a financial need.

Lockheed Martin officials say the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 created the ability to pay for these programs.

Central Florida is home to more than 7,000 Lockheed Martin employees and contains two of its largest facilities.

Video game fundraiser nabs $3 million: A charity fundraiser in which video game experts ran through some of the most popular titles at record-threatening pace, known as “speed running,” raised more than $3 million in Orlando last week.

For eight days, the speedrunners gathered coins, discovered shortcuts and talked about what it takes to play through games quickly as fans watched both in person and on the popular broadcasting platform Twitch.

The Awesome Games Done Quick gamers at one point had more than 200,000 viewers on the platform at once.

The event, which featured dozens of the best video games like Super Mario Bros. 3, BioShock and other high-profile titles, ended up receiving more than 54,000 donations from 80 countries for a total of $3.13 million.

That total was a record for the organization, which debuted in 2010 and has raised more than $25 million since its first year. The money raised at the Orlando event will benefit the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

Since it started, it has raised money for various charities, including Doctors Without Borders, AbleGamers and the Organization for Autism Research.

The speedrunning event ended Jan. 12.