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Future Direction/Long-term Focus
After the program has been implemented the CABE board will hold periodic reviews at least annually in order to determine the outcome statistics and assess what aspects of the program have been most successful. The criteria that we will use to determine the success of the program will include an increase in such parameters as: number of black engineering students enrolling at UCR, number of black engineering students retained in their programs, amount of financial awards to black engineering students, number of black engineering students graduating from UCR (both undergraduate and graduate), and number of outside awards given to the students in our program. If success warrants, after several years we hope to clone and reproduce the program; first at the nearby UCs (Irvine, Los Angeles), and then to the California State Universities (Fullerton, San Bernardino, Pomona).
When the program has proven successful at several University campuses across Southern California, we will expand the program throughout California and beyond. It is our hope that by this time the recently established UC-HBCU initiative will have taken root, and we will be able to easily spread our program into the HBCU system, giving us access to an even greater supply of highly capable HBCU students and faculty (ref.8).
Results / Conclusion
The CABE is dedicated to implementing a solution to fill the current deficit of black engineering doctoral students in the United States. We propose to mentor these students from undergraduate through their PhD and beyond. The program is designed to keep the students involved throughout their entire academic career, and to provide them with the support necessary to ensure that a higher percentage of black engineers are completing doctoral programs in the US. We anticipate that by providing students with these tools and services, they will become competent and competitive engineers in industry and/or academia, allowing them to better serve their communities and our nation and compete in the global market place.
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