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March 7, 2002

Engineering school ranks high in terms of minority graduates

Women and minority recruitment at the School of Engineering got high marks in a study conducted by the Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies, Inc. (AAES).

The study found that in 2001, Pitt's engineering program ranked first in the state in total number of African-American engineering graduates, in bachelor of science degrees awarded to African Americans and in doctorates awarded to African Americans.

Nationally, Pitt ranked third — out of more than 600 schools the AAES surveyed in the United States — in the number of engineering doctorates awarded to African Americans and tied for 22nd in both the number of engineering B.S. degrees and in the overall number of engineering degrees awarded to African Americans.

Pitt also was ranked third in Pennsylvania in terms of the number of women awarded B.S. degrees and in the number of doctorates conferred on women. Nationally, the school was tied for 17th in the number of women who earned doctorates in engineering and 43rd in the number of bachelor of science degrees awarded.

"What makes these rankings all the more satisfying is that we are performing as well as some of the other leading engineering schools in Pennsylvania," says Gerald D. Holder, USX Dean of the School of Engineering. "This report validates the efforts we have put into recruiting and retaining women and minority students."

While Pitt's engineering school's total enrollment is about 2,300, schools such as Penn State, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are two to four times its size.

Two linchpins of the School of Engineering's diversity efforts — one new, one old — come under the purview of the Minority Programs for Academic Enhancement and Recruitment, headed by Sylvanus N. Nwosu, assistant dean for diversity and professor of mechanical engineering at the school.

The new program is the Minority Engineering Mentoring Program (MEMP), which identifies women and underrepresented minority or academically disadvantaged students and prepares them for graduate education in engineering.

MEMP, which was launched last fall with start-up funding from the Provost's office, has 10 students and eight mentors.

"MEMP is a systematic mentoring partnership that provides students with a role model and a brain to pick," says Nwosu, who came to Pitt two years ago, after developing educational programs at Dillard University.

Elements of the program include continuous performance evaluation to ensure that difficulties are identified and rectified quickly; participation in meaningful engineering research projects; attendance at career workshops and team-building and diversity education programs, and cognitive skills, performance and diagnostic assessments.

The oldest of the engineering school's minority programs — the Engineering Impact Program (Pitt IEP) — was started in 1971 by Karl Lewis, William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Pitt IEP, sponsored through Pennsylvania's Act 101, recruits, retains and helps underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students graduate.

Other support mechanisms for minority and women engineering students include student chapters of the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.


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