From the bachelor’s to the doctorate, Georgia Tech has figured out how to be a top producer of Black engineers. But just how do they do it?

By Frank L. Matthews

ATLANTA
The Georgia Institute of Technology: 117. North Carolina A&T State University: 145. These numbers do not represent the outcome of a high-scoring basketball game, but rather it’s the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to Black engineers at each school in the 2004-2005 academic year, according to Diverse’s Top 100 bachelor’s degree producers special report.

In addition, Georgia Tech is first in granting engineering master’s degrees to African-Americans, and is tied for third in producing Black engineering doctorates, along with Vanderbilt University, the University of Florida and George Mason University. Tech’s impressive record of producing minority engineers is now entering its third decade.

The university has 29 Black faculty members, 18 of whom are in the College of Engineering. The school received more than 9,000 applications last year, and enrolled 2,462 new students. And as luck would have it, they are a short distance from the Atlanta University complex, one of the most revered Black higher education centers in the world. And one can’t leave out the dollars and cents. Georgia Tech receives impressive financial support from corporate entities such as IBM, Coca-Cola, Motorola and the Goizueta Foundation.

Taking into account its numbers, its rankings and its deep pockets, one is left with one burning question: How did Georgia Tech achieve a diversity record in engineering that is the envy of its peers?

“A lot of schools talk about institutionalizing diversity success, but here at Tech it is a reality,” says Robert G. Haley, assistant to president G. Wayne Clough. Haley, a former executive at IBM, is a central figure in all of Georgia Tech’s minority-oriented achievement programs. The latest in a long line of key appointments at the university, Haley has been given the latitude and freedom to do things that his counterparts at other institutions only dream about.