Student Initiatives
FOCUS
The FOCUS program, held annually during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, is designed to give undergraduate African Americans an opportunity to visit Georgia Tech, receive an overview of the graduate degree programs and participate in the holiday celebration. Starting in 1992, FOCUS attracts the finest minority undergraduates to Tech’s graduate programs. This recruitment program also provides students with financial information and assists them in the overall decision-making process when selecting a graduate school.
Empowering Minority Engineers to Reach for Graudate Education (EMERGE)
The EMERGE Alliance is an expanding national partnership consisting of universities, organizations, government agencies and national stake-holders conjoined by their renewed commitment to increasing minority graduation rates in science, engineering and mathematics (SEM) at all degree levels, particularly at the graduate level.
Georgia Tech is one of the founding partners of EMERGE and collaborates with other universities and organizations to address the following two national problems:
- the significant shortfall in the number of American engineers and scientists available to fill existing jobs in technology fields
- the shortage of minorities entering engineering and science college programs (under-represented minorities represent 23 percent of the total population, but only constitute six percent of the engineering/technology workforce).
Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering/Science Program (SURE)
SURE is a ten-week summer research program designed to attract qualified minority students into graduate school in the fields of engineering and science. Approximately thirty students of at least junior-level undergraduate standing are recruited on a nationwide basis and paired with both a faculty and a graduate student mentor to undertake research projects in the College of Engineering, College of Sciences, and the Packaging Research Center. The students are housed on campus, and in addition to a $500 travel allowance, are provided with a meal plan and a $4,000 stipend. Aside from their own research projects, the participants are provided with a series of seminars and field trips to expose them to the various topics of interest, both at Georgia Tech and in the Atlanta area.
At the conclusion of the program, the students prepare both oral and written summaries of their research projects. The program has received highly favorable evaluations from the past participants. It is hoped that this unique experience will encourage these students to become applicants for graduate school in ensuing years.
Facilitating Academic Careers in Engineering and Science (FACES)
FACES is a National Science Foundation-sponsored effort between Georgia Tech, Morehouse and Spelman. Its aim is to increase the number of African-Americans attaining doctorates in engineering and science. The ultimate goal of the FACES program is to alter the "face" of the engineering and science professoriate, such that it includes a greater number of African-Americans. An essential part of realizing these goals is to motivate African-Americans to enter graduate school.
Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST)
Georgia Tech is a partner in the BEST initiative to increase the representation of women and minorities in the technical workforce. BEST (Building engineering and Science Talent) was launched in August 2001 as a public-private partnership to follow through on the September 2000 recommendations of the Congressional Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering and Technology Development. The Commission issued a national call to action to redress the demographic imbalance of the U.S. technical workforce. Currently, women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and persons with disabilities comprise 2/3 of the overall workforce but hold only about 1/4 of the technical jobs that drive innovation. This imbalance threatens the economic future of all Americans. The Commission called for a public–private partnership to create and execute a national action plan to develop the technical talent of the under-represented majority. In response, eight federal agencies, led by the National Science Foundation, provided $2 million in seed funding to launch BEST. This strong signal of federal commitment is intended to jumpstart a three-year $10 million initiative to be shared equally by the federal government, industry, and foundations.