CONTACT: Bill Burton at (847) 491-3115 or [email protected]
The McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University doubled the number of Hispanic students in its freshman class this year, highlighting a nationwide trend of greater numbers of Hispanic students pursuing engineering degrees.
At McCormick, the 24 Hispanic students are 6 percent of the freshman class, up from a steady 3 percent since 1994. As recently as 1991, only 1 percent of the engineering freshmen were Hispanic. The McCormick Hispanic freshman enrollment is even slightly higher than the University-wide figure, which is 5 percent.
Why the sudden interest among Hispanics in engineering at Northwestern?
"Northwestern offers good hands-on student projects," says Alex Anaya, a senior from Kenosha, Wis., who is pursuing a double major in mechanical engineering and manufacturing engineering. As examples, he cites McCormick's annual robot contest and Sunrayce, a national competition of university teams racing solar-powered cars of their own design from Washington, D.C. to Orlando, Fla. A Northwestern team will compete this year for the first time.
"And Chicago is a great city," Anaya said. He enjoys the proximity of the campus to Chicago's vibrant Hispanic communities.
Many students may select a school based on its location near a thriving Hispanic neighborhood similar to their hometowns. Others find themselves among a larger community of peers right on campus than they've ever been in before.
"I got in touch with my culture here," said Junior Martinez, a freshman from Tremonton, Utah. At Northwestern, he enjoys living in the International Student Residence. "It's really nice to actually speak Spanish with other kids, because at home it's usually reserved for my family."
Martinez says he first got the chance to connect with other Hispanic students during the summer, when he participated in EXCEL, a program for incoming minority freshman engineers designed to challenge them to perform at the top of their class from the time they begin their studies at Northwestern.
Another program -- one that seven of the 24 Hispanic engineering freshmen took advantage of -- is a mentoring program, open to any minority freshman in the university. Northwestern's may be the only mentoring program that matches students with both a campus contact and an off-campus alumni contact. In addition, seven of the 24 are Freshmen Scholars, a select McCormick group of all races named on the basis of high school achievement.
Despite unprecedented opportunities for engineering graduates, including starting salaries of more than $40,000 and signing bonuses, the American Association of Engineering Societies reports that the country's output of engineering graduates has declined 15 percent since 1987. Last year, U.S. freshman engineering enrollment began climbing again, but while non-minority enrollment jumped 6.3 percent, minority enrollment was up only 2.8 percent.
According to the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, the boost that did occur in minority engineering enrollment was due largely to a rise in the number of Hispanics, which increased 7.2 percent, from 5,467 to 5,858. American Indian enrollment grew 11.7 percent, from 598 to 668 students. African American enrollment was down 1.1 percent, continuing a five-year, 17 percent decline. At McCormick, African American enrollment was unchanged this year, at 7 percent of the freshman class.
The ethnic makeup of the 1998-99 U.S. freshman engineering class will not be known until April.
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