A Pathway To Success: Increasing Minorities In Engineering Through The Pre College Pipeline

Several researchers have indicated that African American college student numbers are rising in higher education. However, issues in preparedness to enter college and little knowledge of the university system remain extant with many minority groups. Also, these underrepresented groups are less likely to enter science-related fields. Thus, it is critical that administrators in higher education and other stake-holder groups develop incentives to encourage, support, and assist precollege underrepresented students to pursue degrees in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields (STEM). This paper focuses on a pre-college program targeted towards African American pre-college students and sponsored by the Virginia Tech chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and the College of Engineering’s Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED). The objectives of this paper are two-fold: 1) to describe the structure and implementation of the pre-college program, and 2) to discuss the impact of the pre-college program on the student participants. Since 1999, approximately 500 students have participated in the pre-college program. Phone interviews were conducted to collect data on these participants. The results of these phone interviews provided data on the number of participants who have completed high school, enrolled in college, pursued an engineering degree, graduated from college, and pursued a graduate degree. In conclusion, this paper discusses the impact this pre-college program has on the future enrollment of these pre-college students in higher education and in the STEM fields.