AWR gives a free year of Microwave Office to every graduating engineer

One of the exciting things that happened yesterday at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association conference in Clearwater Florida is that Sherry Hess, vice president of marketing for AWR announced their Graduate Gift Initiative. To a gasp of the 100 engineering department heads in the room, she explained that AWR would give every EE graduate, undergrad or post-graduate a free copy of AWR’s software tools for microwave and analog design. The tools can also do signal integrity as I explained in my recent article coming out this Thursday. From the press release:

AWR Corporation, the innovation leader in high-frequency EDA, today announced the AWR Graduate Gift Initiative, which will provide qualified 2010 graduates a fully-functional free license for its popular Microwave Office® and Visual System Simulator™ (VSS) software suites. The goal of the initiative is to give graduating engineering students a career head start by providing hands-on exposure to AWR’s high-frequency design software. The announcement was made at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association Annual Conference and Expo held here.

Working with universities worldwide to empower students with RF/microwave software tool experience, AWR’s Preferred University Program was launched in direct response to expressions of interest from industry and academia expressing the need for students to have access to these tools prior to graduation and entering industry.

“With the increasing demand for wireless-enabled devices and the decrease in microwave and RF engineering graduates, tomorrow’s designers will need to work harder and smarter,” said Sherry Hess, vice president of marketing at AWR. “Making our design tools available to these graduates is one of the goals of our program and is part of our commitment to making engineering students more attractive to industry by helping them become proficient with the actual tools of the trade.”

AWR’s Graduate Gift Initiative is available to all qualified class-year 2010 graduating BS, MS, or PhD engineering students and includes the latest full-featured versions of Microwave Office and Visual System Simulator. Two simple steps are all that’s needed to get started:

1. Register for the AWR Graduate Gift Initiative Program

2. Join AWR LinkedIn Academia Community

I applaud AWR for this generous offer. Sure, they hope to end up selling more software when all these recent graduates have to extend the license past the first year. But they know that will only happen if the graduate is familiar with the tool and if the company the graduate works for wants this to happen. What most impressed me is that in addition to giving unemployed graduates something to train on, Sherry also said the intent of the program is to be able to offer a working license to a company that hires the graduate. So that means AWR will let a graduate take this license to his new company and use it cost-free for a year. Giving companies an incentive to hire a EE in these troubled times is something we all should applaud. She also said the license will come with support and help, another amazing aspect of this offer. Way to go, AWR.