Experiences in establishing an outreach program for attracting and retaining minorities to engineering

Since the creation of the Electrical Engineering (EE) program in our University in 2011, the student population has been steadily increasing at about 15% per year. However, although the overall student population has increased, the enrollment of minorities (female, Hispanic and African American students) has not increased at the same rate, even though our university is located in a rural area with a high African American and Hispanic population. This paper present the experience in our department on how we have been implementing an outreach program to increase enrollment and to improve retention rates of our female and minority engineering students, as well as our efforts in collaborating with local K-12 schools for attracting students to STEM areas, and in particular to engineering.