Advancing the Minority Community in the ECE Enterprise
The Inclusive Engineering Foundation (IEF) is dedicated to increasing diversity in engineering by fostering programs that increase the quantity and quality of African American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American engineering graduates with an additional emphasis on gender diversity.
Philanthropic Partners
The Need
There is a lack of minority students entering engineering programs across the nation and an even larger gap of minority engineering graduates. Throughout the last several years, there has been little to no improvement in diversifying the students and graduates in tech. The percentage of black graduates in engineering has remained low and has shown little to no increase between 2011 and 2019 – staying at a low 4.2% and 4.3% respectively.*
For MSIs to attract and retain the best students, staff, and faculty we must increase their access to the tools and information that help programs thrive and ultimately improve the number of minority engineering students and graduates.
*Data from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) “By the Numbers” 2019 survey.
Our Response
The IEF was established in 2021 to fund significant programs and initiatives that bring together today’s leading minority serving institutions in academia, industry, and government while focusing on critical and impactful diversity initiatives.
The IEF supports a broad set of programs aimed to help attract and develop minority students in ECE programs.
Our Impact
In just this past year, IEF supported programs have allowed for 18 dedicated workshop sessions, providing nearly six hundred total participants with focused training on anti-racism in engineering, diversity and inclusion, best practices in hands-on education and remote labs, and networking opportunities with ECE faculty at R1 institutions.
In addition, planning was conducted to develop two substantial programs – the iCASE program to support minority participation in areas that contribute to autonomous systems and the ECE@HSI program to support broadening participation for Hispanic Serving Institutions in electrical and computer engineering.