site visit

1
Agents of Change Graduate Students in ECE
David L. Soldan
March 20, 2004
2
Overview

• Decreasing enrollment of domestic students
• Small number of women and under-represented
  minorities enter or complete graduate school

3
Themes

• Reducing real and perceived barriers to graduate
  school entry
• Need for strong financial support and mentoring
• Promotion of the opportunities and value of
  graduate education in undergraduate programs
• Need for administrative leadership and
  institutional financial support

4
Barriers

• GRE scores not good success indicator for
  domestic students
• Undergraduate GPA use last two years
• Lack of supportive cohort of fellow students

5
Financial Support and Mentoring

• Accumulated debt may be higher for minority
  students
• Need programs to deal with financial support
• Some forgiveness of UG debt upon completion of
  engineering graduate degree

6
Value of Graduate Education

• Early engineering courses can be used to sell
  graduate courses
• Use of industry and government speakers
• Use of internships, especially with places that
  value graduate education
• Research Experiences for Undergraduate

7
Administrative Leadership

• Expand relationships between minority
  institutions and engineering programs
• Expand relationships between two year colleges
  and engineering programs
• Reward faculty efforts to mentor students

8
Can NSF help

• Faculty centered fellowships
• Graduate fellowships for visits to major research
  universities
• Faculty exchange for research institutions and
  minority institutions
• Funding for new minority / women Ph.D.s to have
  visiting positions

9
You can make a difference!!