CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

SECME Executive Director Guy Vickers knows his board of directors raised some eyeb\rows last year when it voted to change the name of the organization.

For twenty years, the acronym SECME had stood for "Southeastern Council for Minorities in Engineering." Last year, after hours of debate, the organization's official name became "Science, Engineering, Communications, Mathematics Enrichment."

So was the action a symbolic white flag in the face of the virulence of the national debate on affirmative action? Did it signal a retreat from the organization's original mission - to increase the numbers of underrepresented minorities in engineering fields?

"Absolutely not," Vickers says, eyebrows flying together with an almost audible snap. "If that had been the case - and I told the board this - I would have resigned on the spot."

Actually, a range of factors prompted the name change. First of all, there was the organization's phenomenal growth.

"We were expanding to many new areas who just didn't feel they were part of the family," Vickers said.

The District of Columbia and Maryland weren't much of a stretch. But once SECME crossed the Sabine River into Texas - well, that was another matter entirely.

"The superintendent at Houston Independent School District asked about that very directly. He let us know they were not a part of the Southeast," said Vickers.

In addition, with SECME's expansion across K-12 programs, the group had begun to outgrow the "minority" part of the name.

"We had begun impacting entire school populations - Blacks, whites, Asians, everyone," Vickers explained, as he took a break from his duties overseeing the student mousetrap car competition at the University of Virginia.

"Our mission is still targeting underrepresented minorities and that's our primary mission," he continued. "Our school systems have to have at least 30 percent underrepresented minority children. Now, SECME kids work in teams, and if there's a SECME team that does not include any under-represented minorities on it, then we do have a problem with that. But most importantly, we haven't been afraid to become inclusive."