Summer Camp 2024: Drone and Rover Academies
The School of Engineering will host a series of week-long summer camps in June and July 2024. The camps will offer high-school students opportunities to get hands-on experience designing, building and programming drones and remote-controlled “Rover” vehicles.
The School of Engineering already ranks far ahead of the national average in underrepresented students
By Rachel Burchfield
This article originally appeared in UAB Magazine.
A diverse student body is a core component of the School of Engineering's educational mission—and nine recently created scholarships aimed at attracting and supporting underrepresented students is proof of that commitment.
The details are different, but the goal for each scholarship is the same: providing students who might not otherwise be able to attend with generous and meaningful scholarship support. These scholarships have come from different avenues—alumni, corporations, foundations—but each aims at increasing diversity within the school and, eventually, within the engineering workforce.
Statistics show that the School of Engineering is above the national average when it comes to a diverse student population.
According to the American Society of Engineering Education's 2018 report—the last year with complete data—only 4.2% of B.S. degrees in Engineering are awarded across the country to students who identify as Black or African American. At UAB. that number is more than three times higher—13.9%. Nationally. data shows 21.9% of degrees are awarded to women. At UAB, it's 28.5%.
"Engineering companies recognize the value of a diverse workforce that represents many different populations and viewpoints when tackling complex. global challenges," says Dean Jeffrey Holmes, M.D., Ph.D. "Yet in a world of increasing technological complexity, the U.S. does not produce enough engineers, and our engineering graduates do not reflect the diversity of our country."
These scholarships are but one attempt to help change the landscape of School of Engineering graduates to reflect diversity, Holmes says.
"Historically. early engineering courses were designed to 'weed out' as many as of half of the students who started college as engineers," he says. "Today, that thinking has completely changed. We understand that we need to do everything we can to find and encourage students who are interested in STEM as early as possible, make it possible for them to attend college, and help them be successful once they get here. That effort requires a mix of K-12 outreach programs, college scholarships, and tutoring and mentoring. UAB Engineering is proud that our student body is already much more diverse than U.S. programs as a whole, and these scholarships will help us come even closer to the goal of producing engineers that reflect the full diversity of our country."
Once these students arrive at UAB. they're met with proactive, comprehensive student support services. These include peer tutoring, personal mentorship, and a guaranteed internship or co-op experience for 100% of Engineering students-a perk that few ofUAB's peer institutions offer. Up next? The planning of the School of Engineering's building within the Science and Engineering complex, which will include a center to house each of these three programs.
Last spring, Indiana-based company Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives (IEA) donated $20,000 to UAB, specifically for engineering scholarshjps-part of a nationwide effort by IEA to help diversify the engineering workforce. In the fall of 2021, those funds were disbursed to five School of Engineering
students, including Le:Aundra Baker, a civil engineering major.
"The IEA scholarship means opportunity," she says. "Opportunity for me to further my education. Opportunity to grow as a person and expand my horizon. Opportunity to network and connect with people that have the same end goal as me. This scholarship has brought me one step closer to my future, so I am very appreciative and thankful for IEA's effort to diversify the engineering world by providing scholarships and internship opportunities to students."
Jada Stringer, also a civil engineering major and an lEA scholar, said the scholarship helped unburden her financially.
"Receiving this scholarship benefits my educational experience tremendousli she says. "I am able to dedicate my time towards focusing more on my studies and less on the financial stress of attending college. I come from a single-parent, low-income household, and from our financial hardships, I have learned the value of perseverance and appreciation, which fuels my determination to be successful in my career path. Not only will this scholarship prevent me from accumulating ... debt, but also it will bring me several steps closer to my envisioned future as a civil engineer."
Engineering isn't the only area of campus with new scholarships coming online. For example, the School ofNursing's $25,000 Curry Bordelon and Christopher Hickman Endowed Nursing Scholarship was created last year. Other new scholarships include the EpsiJon Phi Chapter of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity Endowed Scholarship, a $25,000 alumni gift given by Arthur Boyd Ennis Jr. and the Shegun and Mary Otulana Endowed Scholarship, a $1 million endowed scholarship that will support international students as well as in-state students majoring in STEM areas at UAB.