Robert Haley wants to be clear about one thing. The Georgia Tech administrator says he is a marketer — a marketer of graduate education opportunities for minority students.
“I’m not in recruiting,” says Haley, assistant to Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough. “Marketing is a skill and marketing is expensive. And I’m marketing graduate education.”
The former IBM sales professional’s approach has been a success so far. The Atlanta school leads the nation in granting engineering master’s degrees to African-Americans and shares third place for awarding the most engineering doctoral degrees to Black students, according to Diverse’s Top 100.
Haley has been at the forefront of Georgia Tech’s efforts to attract minority graduate students, particularly with the FOCUS conference, which began Thursday and culminates on Monday’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The FOCUS conference, the 16th annual event created and headed by Haley, will bring nearly 200 of the nation’s brightest Black students from nearly 100 institutions across the country to Georgia Tech for an intensive introduction to one of the nation’s most highly-regarded higher education institutions.
Since Haley created it in 1991, the program has brought nearly 3,000 students onto the Georgia Tech campus, many of whom decide to attend Tech.
But for Haley, it’s not just about getting students to think about coming to Georgia Tech. It’s about providing an educational opportunity.
“There’s a quote by Horace Mann,” Haley says. “Education beyond all other devices of human origin is the great equalizer. That’s what motivates me. That’s what drives me.”
