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Minority Graduate Student Advising and Mentoring for Career Advancement

Abstract

Minority students in graduate school in electrical engineering in the United States are quite few. The numbers are even fewer in small private schools. For example, statistics of black minority undergraduate students in electrical engineering are less than 5% in many small catholic private universities such as University of _____. Given that not all of the undergraduates go on to graduate school in electrical engineering, the numbers are even fewer in graduate school, typically less than 1%.

Facing this reality, it is important to offer minority graduate students in electrical engineering mentoring for retention, graduation and career advancement. The nature of mentoring for undergraduate students is different from that of the graduate students.

In this paper, we give an overview of our experiences of being faculty adviser to most electrical engineering undergraduate students of color and almost all black graduate students in our university. In addition, as founder of and co-adviser to the local chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) we share our experiences gained from advising these students with their graduate school experiences and eventually with their career.

We hope that from our experiences other faculty advising minority graduate students in electrical engineering in other universities can learn and utilize some of the best practices advocated here for their institutions.

Introduction

Minority students in graduate school in electrical engineering in the United States are quite few. The numbers are even fewer in small private schools. For example, statistics of minority undergraduate students in electrical engineering are less than 5% in many small catholic private universities such as University of _____. Given that not all of the undergraduates go on to graduate school in electrical engineering, the numbers are even fewer in graduate school, typically less than 1%.

Also, there are many efforts aimed at recruiting minority students into engineering both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. These efforts have had various levels of success in their effectiveness in improving the enrollment numbers of minority students in engineering both at the

Submitted to the 2007 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference June 24-27, 2007, Honolulu, Hawaii

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Ogunfunmi, T. (2007, June), Minority Graduate Student Advising And Mentoring For Career Advancement Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--2560