The University of Missouri – Rolla (UMR), located on old Route 66, about 100 miles west of St. Louis, is the engineering and science center of the four campuses that make up the state university.

UMR’s program began in 1974 under the auspices of graduate psychology student Floyd Harris. His goal was to actively recruit, mentor, and guide African-American scholars on campus. Back then, there were only 30 Blacks on a campus of 5,200 students, and 85 percent of them were in engineering.

 “Because of the small numbers," said Harris, “the Black students felt isolated. You could go an entire semester and be the only Black in your class. There was some active discrimination on the campus at that time, and they felt they were treated differently than their white peers. The students felt that the environment was not conducive to their study or social development.”

 The pioneering MEP ameliorated this situation.The program actively endorsed and promoted by the UMR administration, did more than just recruit smart Black students with an interest in math and science. There was a summer orientation program, where students spent seven weeks on campus, immersed in advanced math and science courses taught by the instructors they would interact with over the next four years.

 There was continuing mentoring and prodding, accompanied by scholarship programs to ensure that the students who were accepted could actually stay for all four years. By 2005, the program had a reputation that was unique---at UMR, the graduation rate of Blacks in engineering was 65 percent, a rate five points higher than that of their white counterparts.

And then, things deteriorated. UMR officials declined to discuss it. But Harris---who had been director of minority and women affairs---was moved out, and the MEP program became just one of many student activity programs on the Rolla campus. The summer program was cut in half, and emphasis was no longer on long-term mentoring accompanied by intensive indoctrination into campus life. Instead, said Harris, the emphasis was on numbers, bringing in Black bodies, letting them take their chances and use the services available to everyone else on campus.

So the new crop of Blacks in engineering included students from a community college recruited mostly for their prominence on that school’s basketball team. While they succeeded socially, they did not make it academically.

“They have put their emphasis on recruitment at the expense of retention programs,” said Harris. “If you bring in students who are not the best match for this university, you will have a high dropout rate. It’s just unfair.”

It would be tempting to chalk up Harris’ dismissal from the program he pioneered as an unfortunate, internal personnel matter. But minority engineering programs are undergoing changes across the nation as a result of the conservative, Republican-led political climate. Some MEPs have complete university support, and others have to raise their operational funds.

Some provide services throughout the college experience, and others only have the resources to help minority students make it through the first year. And some programs have died.

 “These programs are needed,” said Carolyn Vallas, Director of the Center for Diversity in Engineering at the University of Virginia. “And a lot of the support programs have nothing to do with academics. It’s a matter of helping students adjust to the environment.”

Vallas said some critics of MEP focus only on the admissions process and say many Blacks have an academic inferiority complex. “People who are criticizing,” Vallas said, “don’t see that the Black student may be sitting in a classroom of 150, and in that room he is the only one who looks like him, and the stereotype is that he shouldn’t be there. He has to deal with the isolation in addition to the academic rigors.”

These recruiting programs were created to boost the numbers of under-represented populations in engineering and the sciences---notably Native Americans, women, and African Americans. In some places, "under-represented" populations include Hispanics, although in Texas, for example, Mexican Americans are the majority, and do not face the discrimination in higher education that Blacks face from the University of Texas (UT) system.

 “The programs were created with the realization that we are going to need Blacks, whites, and every kind of engineer to go into the professional ranks,” Vallas explained. “We need a diverse infrastructure in place that is composed of domestic engineers, people who are born and raised here. It’s not going to be all white male engineers who move companies forward in the global competitive marketplace.”

Vallas’ program is funded by the University’s College of Engineering with additional support from corporations such as Lockheed Martin, The Boeing Company, Exxon Mobile, and Merck. “Nationally,” she said, “about five years ago, the environment seemed really hostile. It’s difficult in places like California, where the programs are funded by the state. California right now is hurting.”

In California, former Chancellor Ward Connerly, who is Black, was favored by conservatives when he lead a successful drive to ban affirmative action and any programs targeted towards minorities in the state universities. He has now taken that campaign to other states.
 “We are in the midst of a Ward Connerly attack,” said Derrick Scott, director of the Minority Engineering Program Office at the University of Michigan, where about 550 of the 4,300 engineering students are under-represented minorities.

  “There is a ballot initiative for November in Michigan that looks like Proposition 209 from California that outlawed their affirmative action programs,” Scott continued. “Proposition 209 has literally torn apart the kinds of success that California experienced in attracting women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in a major way. A lot of these programs no longer exist in California. Berkeley was our peer school. 

“There were 100 African Americans in the first-year class this past year at Michigan; at Berkeley there was one in a school that used to boast the same sort of numbers.”

The assault on academic programs aimed at attracting and retaining minorities and women is spreading.

 “If a school is running a program that is open only to some students on the basis of their race or ethnicity, I think that is illegal and wrong,” said Roger Clegg, president of the Virginia-based Center for Equal Opportunity, which works to end programs aimed at providing minority access.

This year, said Clegg, the center sent letters to about 200 colleges and universities with programs aimed at women or minorities, “and we explained why it is illegal and asked them to change the program so all students can participate regardless of race or ethnicity.

“And we told them that if we don’t receive a favorable response, we will file a complaint with the federal government.”

 Clegg said a program like the Women in Engineering program at Florida State University discriminates against men who might benefit from it. “It is offensive, and unfair and divisive,” said Clegg.
 A race-neutral program is offered by the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark, though it is intended to benefit primarily Blacks and Hispanics. Crystal Smith, the Institute’s assistant director for counseling, said “the program started after the Newark Riots, and there was a belief that there needed to be more Blacks in these schools.”
 The program, developed under then-governor Thomas Kean, a Republican who would later head the 9/11 Commission, was designed to help low-income, first generation students go to college. “Normally,” said Smith, “the majority of underrepresented minority students falls into that category, and their parents didn’t go to college.”
 The key to the NJIT program for about 600 incoming students---some of whom are white---is a four-week, intensive, 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. summer program with classes in math, physics, time management, English, and chemistry. In addition, the architecture majors have classes in architecture and a design studio. Tutoring, throughout the year, is mandatory.
 “They love the support they receive,” said Smith, “and the retention rate is higher than the general university rate. Ninety percent of our students graduate.”
 While NJIT recruiting programs affecting minorities have state support, other programs do not. Texas had a 30-year tradition of recruiting and supporting African and Native Americans to the UT engineering schools, but that changed after the state successfully challenged affirmative action programs at the publicly funded school, in the federal Hopwood vs. Texas case .

 “When Hopwood came down, we were no longer able to offer scholarships to students who were African American, Hispanic, or Native American,” said Andrea Ogilvie, Director of UT’s Equal Opportunity in Engineering Program. The University pays Ogilvie’s salary, “and my responsibility is to raise money. If there were 10 companies like Exxon Mobil, we would be in great shape," she said.

But it is difficult to run a labor-intensive support program for hundreds of students without dedicated funding. At UT, the program is just one more division within the overall student affairs services, Ogilvie said, “and I try to reach out specifically to Hispanic, Native American, and African-American students to market the services available to support them.”

It is not clear what the future holds for these programs that, over the last 30 years, have played key roles in increasing the numbers of minorities and women in engineering and the sciences.

 "Across the country,” said David Aragon, MEP Co-Director for Retention at the University of Colorado, “it took executive leadership from industry, from the federal government, and higher education to create these initiatives and invest in them. Over the first 20 years, we have seen this effort accomplish a certain amount of success in increasing the representation of minorities in engineering.

“We are stuck at a threshold, and those old leaders have retired. The new leaders don’t necessarily have the same vision the early leaders did, and it is taking time for people to realize that future advances will need new investments.”