Considerable progress in the recruitment and retention of female and underrepresented minority students in the College of Engineering has been realized, particularly over the past decade." In this opening statement of the College of Engineering Diversity Task Force: Report to the Dean, April 2000, the task force acknowledged the momentum of programs, scholarships, and facilities to support a more diverse student population. But they expressed deep concerns about the demographics and trends:

"The representation of women and minority students in our undergraduate population is well below that for our peer institutions. Although the steady growth in the enrollment of women and Latino/a students throughout the last decade is encouraging, African-American student enrollment (and graduation rates) has declined during that period and female student enrollment currently stands at about 19% of the student body."

The Diversity Task Force was charged with evaluating "attitudes, programs, and activities related to our underrepresented students and faculty and to present recommendations for improvement." Faculty from eight departments served, with J. Gary Eden, associate vice chancellor for research and a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, chairing the effort.

The college’s staff and programs for recruiting and retaining students from underrepresented groups–women, ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities–drew praise and support. But two clear-cut needs emerged, Eden said. First was the need to address areas where the college was "falling short of aspirations" for diversity. Second was the need to sustain and expand the commitment of resources to diversity efforts.

The task force made three key recommendations:

• add staff to the Minority Engineering Program and the Women in Engineering Program;

• increase scholarship funds to both programs; and

• establish a facility in Engineering Hall for studying, tutoring, and mentoring that would be open to all students and staffed by volunteers from the student societies.

An economic downturn and budget cuts put ideas for expanding staffs on hold, but the college responded to other recommendations. When the dust settled on renovations of Engineering Hall, student societies and an upgraded Engineering College Enrichment Center occupied much of the first floor. Offering computer workstations, learning modules, tutoring sessions, workshops, and helpful graduate student assistants, the Enrichment Center is managed by the Minority Engineering Program as a hub for study, development, and community.

In addition, corporate-sponsored support grew to more than 50 merit scholarships and provided grants for computer equipment and college activities targeting diversity. The college announcement for the four-year, merit-based Spectrum Scholarships to bring more diversity to engineering drew applications from top high school seniors around the country.

"The college is moving in the right direction, but we must continue to mount a larger effort and devote more resources to this issue of diversity–it’s at the heart of who we are and what we will be," Eden said. "It’s difficult to think of anything more important to the future of the college, frankly."

Although he thought he understood many of the diversity issues, Eden said he was surprised and troubled by some findings. One was the loss of women students between the freshmen and sophomore years, which was attributed to several factors, including perceptions of hostility from male student peers and advising that failed to help women understand the options and opportunities in engineering. Another retention issue was the low number of minority students affected by the college’s financial aid program relative to the amount of funding available.

In the area of recruiting, a key problem was the decline in African-American enrollment, even as the Minority Engineering Program improved the retention of undergraduate minorities. The task force identified limited staff as the principal barrier to reaching more qualified minorities in more places. They called for a stronger and more extensive recruiting effort in such communities as Peoria, East St. Louis, and Decatur as well as Chicago.

The College of Engineering, ranked among the top engineering colleges in the country, has much to offer any student and much to gain from a diverse student population, Eden noted.

"We’re an academic community, a community of scholars–students, faculty, and others engaged in the marketplace of ideas. We’re all learning together and we bring to the table different experiences, cultural backgrounds, and ways of looking at the world. If we limit the scope of backgrounds, we’ve limited the discussion, the outcomes, and the solutions.

"So we have to do everything we can to overcome barriers, whether they are cultural, financial, or something else," Eden said. "It’s not an easy problem, but it’s very important to make it a high priority, raise the commitment, and put resources into it."

Tending the Pipeline

Although the committee recommendations focused on increasing diversity in the student body as a college priority, the issue of diversity within the faculty ranks was part of the background discussion, according to Jennifer Lewis, a committee member from the Materials Science and Engineering Department.

Diversity in future faculty members can be lost all along "the pipeline" from grade school through college as students make choices, she said. Students who begin to veer away from science and math early may struggle with these courses in high school or avoid them altogether–the stream of budding scientists and engineers in the pipeline begins to slow as early as the fifth grade. If students avoid science and math in high school, they will be unprepared for an engineering program in college. In college, many women and minority students choose to enter the work force rather than go on to graduate school–the pipeline leading to a diverse faculty carries only a trickle of students at this point.

"What we saw was a problem rooted in recruitment and retention," she said. "Recruitment is the harder problem. We have to get more people in the door and that starts in grade school with the understanding that math and science are options for many different students."

For the University of Illinois, location is an additional problem. "Many of our peer institutions are located in larger cities, which comes up time and time again in terms of culture and employment opportunities for partners," Lewis said. "Location isn’t something we can change, but it shouldn’t be an excuse not to try to improve diversity."

The strong selling points for the College of Engineering are the well equipped and unique research facilities, the top-ranked departments, and the high-quality faculty and students. Once people come, they tend to stay, Lewis said. That creates stability in faculty ranks, which is desirable but limits opportunity for rapid change. The culture within a department and the pools different fields draw from can pose further limitations.

"We often hear, ‘We just want the best person.’ But seeking out diversity isn’t counter to that goal; it isn’t about dropping standards," Lewis said. "Of course we all want the best person when a position comes open, but we must remain open to the possibility that the best person could be a minority or a woman."

Although engineering administration has shown a strong commitment to diversity through leadership and programs, a cultural change in the college will require the "intentional involvement" of departments and faculty, members of the task force concluded in the final report. Incremental success will be measured in enrollment and graduation numbers but "true success will be having our faculty and student body represent society at large–that’s what diversity is all about," Eden said.

"Many women, minorities, and persons with disabilities have the talent and skills to succeed here, and we need them," he added. "Success in diversity goes well beyond academics and numbers to what we are as a college."

Tomorrow’s Engineers

The college’s success in diversity has far-reaching impacts on the diversity of the workforce as well. That was a message of the 2002 College of Engineering Advisory Board meeting, where leaders of several national and global industries, national research laboratories, and state and local communities worked with faculty and staff to help define the most important actions the college could take to enhance diversity.

"Diversity in science and engineering is a complex, mind-boggling problem, but engineers take big, complex problems apart and analyze them, and from that we understand how to make progress. We can do this," said Dean David E. Daniel, as he described their charge. Working groups tackled eight diversity topics, ranging from the pipeline for schoolgirls (kindergarten through ninth grade) to underrepresented groups at the graduate student and faculty levels. (Details of the meeting are posted on the Web at www.engr.uiuc.edu/corporate.)

Like the task force, the working groups called for expanding and building on the successful programs and activities under way now. A key area of difference was a role they defined for industry to better support those activities and to do more outreach. Many corporations provide scholarships, offer internships, and host engineering camps. Some representatives also spend time on campus speaking at meetings, mentoring students, and serving as role models.

Those are critical interactions, but the working groups pointed to a need for industry involvement with fifth and sixth grade students–just as they are poised to enter the pipeline.