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Highlighting exceptional achievement
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We're pleased to provide this section featuring high-performing
students and their achievements. We'll also use this space to update you
on the latest work we're doing to help support even more successful
engineering graduates. If you know of a university
student who is realizing his or her potential and deserving of
special recognition, please tell us about them.
»» Tell us your story!
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Featured items:
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Scholar Spotlight:
"On a Path for Success"
Stacie Harrison Henderson,
NACME Volunteer Writer
The mother of fifteen and twelve year-old daughters, Rosalia had worked her way up to the highest position available for a non-degreed manager in the hospitality industry. However, she always believed in the importance of a college education and would share that belief with her daughters. When her youngest asked why obtaining a college education was so important when Rosalia appeared to be doing well without a degree, Rosalia realized she was not a true example of her words. "I was determined to show them by my example," Rosalia explained, "how important a college education is."
With that as her motivation, combined with the desire to provide for her daughters' educations, Rosalia decided to return to school to achieve her dream of becoming an engineer.
Her father had worked in the petrochemical plants near her home in Ponce, Puerto Rico and she would at times bring him his lunch and visit with him at work. It was then, while walking through the units with her father as he explained how they operated that she started thinking, "I would be able to do that myself.” Her fondness for chemistry started when she took her first chemistry class in community college and found it fascinating "how such few types of atoms can make a diverse range of products by just a bit of engineering."
The University of Houston provided her an opportunity to pursue her dream and to stay in her community without uprooting her daughters. The university also provided the support system she needed through mentors and resources that enabled her to be successful. While there, she also became acquainted with NACME.
Rosalia received her first scholarship from NACME in 2002. That support has not only included financial resources, but also an internship with DuPont that led to her current co-op position with the company. "The additional monies I receive from NACME," Rosalia stated, "has been crucial in my continuing education. Without it I would have to work an additional job to make up for the difference."
As someone who has taken the non-traditional path to pursuing her dream of becoming an engineer, Rosalia firmly believes that one should "never settle into a position in life out of comfort and that sometimes complacency will restrict our capabilities to do more."
Complacency does not describe Rosalia Wisinger. She has no time to be content or settle for her life as it was before she returned to school. As a woman of Puerto Rican heritage with two children to raise, she sees the path she has taken as her strongest asset and is convinced that her example can serve as a motivator for others.
She also believes that her association with NACME has demonstrated to her that one cannot accomplish goals without the help and support of others. "I am proud," Rosalia says, "that I am a NACME scholar and to represent an organization that enables minorities in engineering to pursue their dreams and succeed. I hope to someday give back to the organization that has enabled me to pursue this path."
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Scholar Spotlight:
"The Sky's the Limit"
Stacie Harrison Henderson,
NACME Volunteer Writer
Adam Rodriguez, a NACME and Texas A&M University Alumnus is currently working at R.G. Miller Engineers in Houston. He works in the Storm Water Management Department and designs detention ponds and drainage channel improvements.
Rodriguez said his NACME scholarship allowed him "to make my college experience a memorable one. I was not forced to work while taking classes. My scholarships and summer jobs were enough to finance my education for four and a half years, and I was able to be involved in a number of organizations on campus. Unlike other scholarship programs, NACME continued to provide financial assistance when I had a really bad semester."
As a NACME scholar at Texas A&M University, Rodriguez held an internship at Bury & Partners, Inc. He performed "land development work including permitting, site investigation reports, researching (city, county and state) codes and detention design on (commercial, industrial, single- and multi-family) developments in the Houston area".
His most exciting internship project was a project where he was in charge of gathering preliminary design information for an auto-repair store an hour outside of Houston. He met with officials from the state Department of Transportation, city and county offices, planning department and utility companies at one time and prepared the majority of the preliminary report submitted to the client for consideration.
Rodriguez said he really enjoyed his undergraduate experience including travel across the country through the Student Engineer's Council (campus organization) and managing the largest student-run engineering career fair in the nation. Most of his professors were supportive and helpful throughout his collegiate career.
Rodriguez's advice or message that he wanted to share with young people interested in math, science and technology is that "with a degree in a technical field, the sky's the limit. You will work hard for that degree, but it will be worth it when you receive a bunch of job offers for really cool jobs." He said that upon graduating the job offers began to "pour in," which assured him that he was prepared to enter the workforce.
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Scholar Spotlight:
A Leader in the Making
Written by Stacie Harrison Henderson, NACME Volunteer Writer
Jariah Baker, a NACME Scholar and a member of the New Jersey Institute of Technology class of 2007 describes her undergraduate experience as amazing. "I have met some interesting and inspiring people," Baker said. She explained that her school offers its students very useful and encouraging resources and opportunities that she believes are unique to her school.
"The NACME scholarship has been the best thing to happen to me in regards to my college life" explains Baker. She said the NACME scholars have been like a family to her sharing their experiences and "Lessons Learned" and NACME sent her resume out to companies, thus providing her exciting summer internship opportunities.
Baker has had one summer internship so far, which she describes as a wonderful experience. She was a summer intern at Genworth Financial (formerly GE Financial Assurance) in Lynchburg, VA and worked in the Sales and Marketing Department on a project geared at establishing relationships beyond the middleman who transacts business directly with the company. Baker's summer internship allowed her to also work on enhancing the departmental website and conduct interviews for all of the interns.
Her most exciting summer internship project was the Producer Loyalty Index Project. The goal of the project was to determine how loyal the sales agents were to Genworth Financial because they (sales agents) did business with thousands of producers. Baker enjoyed reading the surveys that were conducted and watching the numbers on a monthly basis to try to determine the sales agents' loyalty. "This project was very value adding and it felt good leading it" Baker said.
Baker feels her engineering education played a vital role in her thought processes while working at Genworth Financial. She learned how to address problems from different angles in her classes, which helped her to reach her goals in a quicker and more efficient manner.
When asked what advice she would like to share with any young person interested in math, science or technology, Baker explained that these are the most important areas in the career world and developing an understanding will allow young people to pursue any career choice. It is important in our ever-changing world that young people have a strong understanding of these three areas which will require discipline and time to obtain, however it will be worth it in the long run.
We look forward to seeing all that Baker will accomplish in the upcoming years.
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Partnerships Make Us Stronger
NACME convened the second University Partner Meeting at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. Forty educators (21 of 25 partner institutions), engineering deans, college administrators minority engineering program directors and NACME Board of Trustees representatives joined the NACME staff on November 18-19, 2004, for an all-day "NACME Institutional Partner Workshop". Also in attendance were 6 of 9 Participating institutions – those institutions that contributed scholarship monies through the 30th anniversary gala and are not currently a NACME grantee. The purpose of the workshop was to facilitate the sharing of best practices for the pre-college outreach, recruitment and retention of minority engineering students among NACME partner institutions, discuss the report on the Block Grant 2003-04 End-of-Year metrics and develop a NACME partner communication and dissemination plan for the 2004-05 academic year.
Through NACME's Scholar program, a formal relationship has been established with selected universities to support a cohort of at least ten students over five years, set performance parameters and metrics, and challenged each institution to leverage the funds to support and graduate even more minority engineering students.
Performance metrics include annual retention and graduation rates, GPA, and internship experiences (disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender), as well as 5-year productivity. These measures are benchmarked against national institutional enrollment, retention, and graduation trends. NACME expects evidence of continuous improvement toward parity: aggregate rising GPAs, reduction in the minority-nonminority retention gap, and stable or decreasing time to degree.
With the first set of Institutional Partner data due at summer's end, the Fall 2004 workshop was an opportune time to share the wealth of experience and knowledge gained over the first year.
It was reported that twenty-five percent of the students selected, transferred to an engineering program at a baccalaureate granting institution. Sixty percent have achieved a GPA at 3.0 or above and forty-five percent are first generation college students.
The partner meeting was designed to share concerns, develop strategies, and hear from experts whose organizations can impact the mission of increasing the production minority students in engineering.
A complete report on the outcomes of the meeting will be distributed among the partner institutions.
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