“We were adding to the number of African-American engineers,” Mobeti says. “And if you look at the Southeast, you would see per capita that Georgia produces fewer engineers. So there is a need for the program.”
But the courts have disagreed so far. Fulton County Superior Court dismissed the case, citing that CAU was a private institution and could make its own decisions.
The group appealed the case to the Georgia Court of Appeals, which sent it to the Georgia Supreme Court.
The engineering program is slated to be closed by May 2008, when the last students in the program are scheduled to graduate.
The engineering program is now a shell of what it used to be. Since the closing was announced, the number of professors has gone from 19 to seven. Research and grant money has also dropped dramatically, Mobeti says.
But saving the program isn’t about professors trying to save their jobs, he says.
“We’re not trying to tell the university how to run its affairs,” Mobeti says. “We just want them to follow the proper process. That way you can make informed decisions and everybody can be comfortable with that.”
--Add Seymour, Jr.
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