In 1965, MSU's College of Engineering had eight black students.
Two years later, the Engineering Equal Opportunity Program began, and the number jumped to 60.
Today, 847 minority students account for about 19 percent of the 4,504 students in the college.
Staff and faculty said the Engineering Equal Opportunity Program, now called the Diversity Programs Office, jump-started the increase in minority enrollment after the College of Engineering started the program in 1967.
The Engineering Equal Opportunity Program began as a scholarship initiative. Now, the office has a guided learning center, academic advising and focuses on community-building and outreach.
"It was started because as a general rule, we weren't attracting both women and minorities as well as we should have," said Lawrence W. Von Tersch, who was dean of engineering at the time. "It was wildly successful. We had a significant group of faculty who supported that with their own money for a while to help out."
Today, the office primarily is funded by corporate sponsors, and it remains an active unit, offering services and academic assistance to all engineering students in a multicultural context.
The office's relationship with corporations is not a money issue, Director Aurles Wiggins said, but rather a connections issue. The college of engineering tries to incorporate diversity policies it finds in corporate America, she said.
Administrators said they focus their efforts on underrepresented groups such as blacks, Native Americans and Chicanos and Latinos. Asian Pacific Americans generally are not viewed as underrepresented in engineering, because they make up more than 40 percent of the minority students in the college.
But the push for pre professional training starts long before graduation.
Engineering 160: Diversity and Engineering is a class designed to prepare students for real-world engineering. Students wear corporate attire and attend the 8 a.m. class to learn studying techniques and other methods for success.
"It's our responsibility to educate young professionals to multicultural issues before they go into the workplace," Wiggins said. "We need a process of education and training encouragement so it's not an us and a them, it's an us."
Part of moving forward means creating a pathway for minority students from elementary school onward, she said.
"We need to broaden our base of how we address issues of access and parity," Wiggins said.
Thirty volunteers strongly support one-on-one and group assistance through the program. Other volunteers work with students in elementary and middle school engineering programs.
Graduate student DeVon Washington participated in one such program, the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program, before he arrived at MSU in 1991.
"It definitely sparked my interest," Washington said. "It got you more familiar with the practical side of engineering, what you're really going to do."
Wiggins said that all of the office's services are open to people of all backgrounds.
"We cannot afford to leave anybody out of this," she said. "Let's put everybody at the table with involvement and information."
For more information on the Diversity Programs Office, visit www.egr.msu.edu/dpo.
