NACME Announces Comprehensive Plan to Boost Numbers of Minority Engineering Graduates
Summary
“We know about some of the major hurdles students face in receiving engineering degrees – or even being educated about and exposed to the industry – so we have identified fairly easy, but far-reaching steps that community colleges can implement to start to curb this competitive crisis.” The roundtable, led by Dr. Paula Hudis, Director for Pathway and Curriculum Development, ConnectEd, is the first step of a multi-year effort by NACME to heighten awareness about new initiatives that can be launched to put engineering at the forefront of students’ minds.In what NACME identifies as the “New American Dilemma,” fewer than 12 percent of engineering degrees are earned by minorities, despite much higher underrepresented representation in the overall student populations at U.S. colleges and universities.“We are suffering a competitiveness issue globally and yet we are denying this huge population, either by benign neglect or at worst active discrimination, opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,” said Dr. McPhail.In the comprehensive action plan, NACME identified three important steps:• Adjust existing community college math curricula to allow students to learn engineering-related skills and to advance to higher level math courses;• Identify funding sources to implement curricula changes;• Launch several pilot programs at leading community colleges.“When it comes to the sciences and engineering in particular, the United States is frankly falling far behind other nations and regions,” said Dr. Irving Pressley McPhail, CEO and President of NACME.“We know about some of the major hurdles students face in receiving engineering degrees – or even being educated about and exposed to the industry – so we have identified fairly easy, but far-reaching steps that community colleges can implement to start to curb this competitive crisis.”The roundtable, led by Dr. Paula Hudis, Director for Pathway and Curriculum Development, ConnectEd, is the first step of a multi-year effort by NACME to heighten awareness about new initiatives that can be launched to put engineering at the forefront of students’ minds.