Three programs at Rowan University with goals to promote diversity and equality for underrepresented races and sexualities on and off campus recently have been awarded grants by the National Science Foundation to aid those efforts.
The grants will be available to most of the projects for five years and all programs have already started the implementation process.
The five-year project – “Rethinking Engineering Diversity, Transforming Engineering Diversity (REDTED)” is led by Sukumaran, head of the Department of Civil Environment and Engineering.
The core research team, which consists of six faculty members, a coordinator and two graduate students, hopes to change the diversity of Rowan’s student body and create an inclusive curriculum within the field of engineering through the RED program. The grant money will be used to support a full-time coordinator on the project and on evaluators to make sure the research team is doing what they said they would do.
“I’m very grateful for the support from the NSF and what it has provided, and we’re really looking forward to implementing the grant,” Sukumaran said in a phone interview with Diverse. “We are in the process of implementation but we hope to see its success. The first year itself has actually resulted in some early successes and [found] that we do have the most diverse student body coming to CEE this fall.”
The program is available for all students studying in the CEE College and has a mentorship program where junior and seniors mentor transfers and freshmen and alumni mentor junior and senior students.
