Recruitment and Retention Subcommittee Report 10/8/2010

1. Recruitment and Retention Subcommittee Report10/8/2010 Jennifer Cha, Nate Delson, Tara Javidi, Christopher Kanan, Espoir Kyubwa, Larry Larson, Katrice Lee, Enrique Luco, Terrance Mayes, Rob Rome, Sonia Rosas, Lelli Van den Einde, Mandy Bratton

2. Recruiting • Implement a strategic recruiting program that draws on the success of schools such as Georgia Tech. • Consider purchasing targeted lists of prospective students from educational organizations such as ETS for Graduate Student recruiting. • Materially partner with diversity professional organizations such as the Society of Women Engineers, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and National Society of Black Engineers to gain greater visibility through their memberships. • By department, send personalized letters to accepted undergraduate students to encourage enrollment.

3. Mentor Fellowship Program: • Create a two-year fellowship program that will support graduate students in the completion of an MS degree. • Funded at $50,000 per year for two years, the recipient would receive $45,000 in support and the faculty mentor would receive $5,000 as unrestricted support. • As part of the fellowship award the recipient would become a mentor to an underrepresented undergraduate in their department, building community within the department. • Include in the fellowship program a leadership component that creates a meaningful mentoring relationship between faculty mentor-recipient, and recipient-undergraduate. • Recipient and undergraduate would participate in engineering leadership professional development events hosted by the Gordon Center.

4. Departmental Diversity Officer: • Each department would have an appointed Diversity Officer. • This faculty person would coordinate with the student affairs office in each department to help monitor underrepresented students in the department. • Officer would help monitor academic performance and refer students to resources on campus as appropriate. • Officer would encourage undergraduates to participate in student organizations within the Jacobs School to increase student engagement.

5. IDEA Center Faculty Award: • The Jacobs School could establish an annual award that recognizes a faculty member for going above and beyond regular responsibilities to support inclusion initiatives within the school. • The recipient would receive an award and resources to sponsor an event for students during the following academic year.

6. Program Assessment • In order to gauge progress, a comprehensive assessment program will be developed and implemented. • Assessment would also collect comparative data from recruitment and retention initiatives at peer institutions.

7. Recruiting and Retention:Student Projects Related to Social Justice • Students enter engineering often because they want to build things that change the world. • Projects could range from use of cell phone technology in rural Mexico, to developing educational modules for K-12 education in poor neighborhoods in the U.S. • Such projects would build upon existing UCSD strengths to create compelling reasons for ambitious high school grads to choose us. • In addition, these projects tend to generate publicity in the press, which can accelerate recruitment.