UTRGV aims to “broaden participation in engineering” among Latinas and other minorities by creating a center for equity with a $1,199,988 grant it has received from the National Science Foundation.
“Hispanics [are] one of the largest growing populations in the U.S., yet they are the least represented in engineering, so that’s an inequality,” said Ala Qubbaj, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “And when we talk about Latinas, they are way more underrepresented.”
The Center for Equity in Engineering: Engage, Educate, Enrich will be used to increase student engagement in the field of engineering, from getting middle schoolers interested in the field to assisting with finding employment for recently graduated engineering students.
“The general goal of this center is to broaden participation in engineering, and we are focusing on minorities and we are focusing on Latinas,” said Laura Benitez, associate director of the Center for Equity in Engineering.
The center will focus on three core tenets for this goal: engage, educate and enrich. The ultimate outcome would be UTRGV producing a larger number of engineering students from disadvantaged backgrounds into high-ranking positions in the field of engineering, according to Qubbaj and Benitez.
“We want to enrich and facilitate the pathway for those who are in K-12 all the way to industry and the workforce,” Benitez said.
The first goal is to engage, which will focus on recruiting young students to start the pipeline into the field of engineering. This will be accomplished with events, such as engineering-focused summer camps and reaching out to Rio Grande Valley school districts.
“[Engage] will focus on K-12, on teachers, on families, on students in middle school,” Benitez said.
The second goal of the project, educate, will focus on students who are already enrolled in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
An example of what changes could result from the establishment of this center can be seen in Alyssa Cavazos, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, and her ideas on changing the way engineering is taught at UTRGV.
“Through this initiative, students serve as teaching partners or teaching consultants and they work with faculty members to give them feedback on their teaching, on their syllabus, on their assignments, on their lectures, on their activities in class,” Cavazos said.
This is one method that will be used to make students enrolled in the College of Engineering and Computer Science feel supported by the college; however, this program does not end when the students graduate.
The third goal of the center is to enrich. This will focus on making sure that students are able to use their degrees to reach their full potential.
“I don’t want to see any of our students graduate and work in a retail store,” Qubbaj said.
He wants students to set goals for themselves and spoke of a success story at the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
“[A former student] told me that her dream was to visit Disney World, and now she’s building Disney World,” he said. “This is the most exciting part of what we do here, is bringing these opportunities to these students.”
Qubbaj hopes the center will help to create many more of these stories of success.
The center will open Oct 1. 2022 and will be housed within the UTRGV College of Engineering and Computer Science building on the Edinburg campus, but services will also be offered in Brownville.
“We will do summer camps in Edinburg and summer camps in Brownsville,” Qubbaj said. “When we do activities, when we do internships … they will be offered to all the students.”
He also spoke about what having the center means for UTRGV.
“I am very proud that we are one among … five [institutions] to receive this center nationwide,” Qubbaj said. “We are taking a leadership role at the national level and I’m really proud of that.”
The center is phase one of a two-phase plan offered by the National Science Foundation Grant. Phase Two would provide more funding for the center and an expansion of events and activities, and possibly the addition of more events and activities for the center.
