For Dr. Yvette Pearson, an associate dean in Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering, the award of a $2.66-million National Science Foundation grant to Rice and two other Houston institutions means that other scholars may not have to experience some of the difficulties she faced early in her career.
Pearson, a co-investigator on the grant announced this week, is among the few African-American women faculty in engineering disciplines.
“Right now, according to the most recent numbers I’ve seen, only about five percent of engineering faculty are underrepresented minorities and – looking at the demographics of this country — that percentage needs to be much higher,” Pearson said.
The award is part of the NSF’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program, which seeks to “improve pathways to the professoriate and [to] success for historically underrepresented minority doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty” in STEM disciplines, according to the NSF.
The funds are to be provided over a five-year period to Rice, Texas Southern (TSU) and the University of Houston in an effort to increase the number of underrepresented minorities pursuing academic careers in engineering and science, specifically for those in data engineering and data science disciplines.
The grant will fund a project to be called AGEP STRIDES (Strengthening Training and Resources for Inclusion in Data Engineering and Sciences).
“We know the challenges, that faculty are not very diverse in these fields,” said Dr. Reginald DesRoches, the principal investigator of the grant. “We also know the importance of having diverse faculty in terms of recruiting diverse students, that when you have a diverse faculty, students get more excited when they see people like themselves in these fields.”
