36th NSBE Annual Convention
Toronto, Canada, March 31–April 4, 2010
Engineering a Global Impact
Golden Torch Award Winners
Profiles by Roger Witherspoon
The NSBE Golden Torch Awards, now in their 13th year, recognize organizations and individuals who exemplify NSBE’s ideals of academic excellence, professional success and dedication to improvement of the black community. The NSBE Golden Torch Awards also link the accomplishments of the award winners with the dreams of college-bound students. Since their inception, these awards have provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to talented high school seniors. This year’s Golden Torch honorees will receive their awards at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Saturday, April 3, 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., during the climactic closing event of NSBE’s 36th Annual Convention.
Goldn Torch Legacy Award,
Col. Frederick D. Gregory
United States Air Force (Ret.)
Sitting in the pilot’s seat of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1985, Col. Frederick D. Gregory continued his high-flying career. The engineer, Air Force Academy graduate and Vietnam War veteran was beginning a seven-day mission to take experiments to the Spacelab and release a small communications satellite.
Col. Gregory was a long way from the segregated D.C. school system of his youth and the dreams of his father, who had died in 1977, a year before Gregory was accepted into the astronaut program.
“Francis Anderson Gregory was an amazing person,” Col. Gregory muses. “He was a graduate of Case Institute in Cleveland with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering, and then went to MIT for a master’s. But Negroes were not able to get jobs in those areas back then.”
His father gave Gregory many experiences, including air shows and other activities at the Air Force base near their home in Washington, D.C. Gregory graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1964, took a year of helicopter training and flew combat missions in Vietnam. He then was trained as a fighter pilot before going to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 1970. Four years later, he became a research test pilot for NASA at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., which led to his entry into the astronaut corps in 1978.
After the Spacelab mission, Col. Gregory was named commander of two others — the first in 1989 and the second in 1991 — requiring nighttime launches from the Kennedy Space Center. When his last flight was completed, Col. Gregory had logged 455 hours in space. After his space flights, he served at NASA Headquarters in a variety of executive jobs before retiring from the position of deputy administrator in 2005.
Distinguished Engineer of the Year
Capt. Willie L. Metts, U.S. Navy
Division Director, Information Operations and Intelligence Assignments (PERS-47), Navy Personnel Command
Will Metts always wanted a career involving public service. After graduation from high school, he viewed serving in the military as a good foundation. In the small Central Georgia town where he grew up, he says, “the military was viewed as a symbol of enhancing diversity and creating greater opportunities for all members of society.”
Metts enrolled in the electronics engineering program at Savannah State University and the Navy ROTC, which paid for his education. After his commissioning, his desire was to pursue a military career that influenced policy and deployment decisions.
“That desire drove me to the intelligence community in general and cryptology in particular.”
His first assignment after commissioning, in 1985, was as Combat Information Center and Electronics Warfare officer on a frigate, the USS Thomas C. Hart, followed by service on a guided missile cruiser during Operation Desert Storm. After Desert Storm and graduation from the Naval Post Graduate School, he began his rise through the Navy’s Information Warfare Community.
Capt. Metts is one of only 850 Information Warfare officers in the Navy and is the highest-ranking African American in that specialty.
In his current position, he is responsible for career development, and assignments of Information Warfare, Intelligence, Information Professional and Oceanography assignments for approximately 3,600 officers. He is also the Navy’s lead for career management for the Information Dominance Workforce and for expansion and modernization in the area of cyber warfare to meet the threats of the future.
From his post in Tennessee, Capt. Metts is an avid supporter of the Naval Sea Cadet Corps, speaking to minority high school students about the importance of science, technology, engineering and math programs in preparing them for a rewarding future.
Lifetime Achievement in Government
Col. Jeffrey T. Butler, Ph.D., U.S. Air Force
Permanent Professor and Head, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Dean of the Faculty, U.S. Air Force Academy
As one of four senior division chiefs for the spy satellite program of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Col. Jeffrey T. Butler, Ph.D. helped design and run a multibillion-dollar space network to obtain information on terrorist organizations worldwide. His challenges included handling problems with spy satellites in space and fighter aircraft in flight, then explaining the expenditures to Congressional representatives, some of whom had sci-fi expectations. But it is all par for the course for Col. Butler of the U.S. Air Force, who has made a career tackling obstacles on and above the planet.
Col. Butler was a self-described Army brat whose father served several tours in Vietnam. The son was interested in engineering and technology, and recalls, “Dad always said if you go into the military, go in as an officer.”
He graduated from the Air Force Academy with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1988 and went to work on the F-16 fighter aircraft, which was about to engage in combat over Iraq during the first Gulf War. In 1991, Col. Butler earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Florida State and a second master’s, in military studies, from the Air University. He was then assigned to the F-22 Stealth Fighter program, developing weapons integration systems and electronic maintenance programs. In 1998, he earned a doctorate in computer engineering, specializing in the development of advanced micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) to guide unmanned, low-altitude drones and space vehicles. It was this work that led Col. Butler to the NRO, which awarded him the Gold Medal, its highest honor, for his groundbreaking work.
He is now a tenured professor at his alma mater, training the next generation of aerospace engineers.
Lifetime Achievement in Academia
Minority Engineering Program Director of the Year
Amy L. Freeman, Ph.D.
Assistant Dean of Engineering Diversity, The Pennsylvania State University
Amy Louise Freeman grew up as one of eight children of a minister, in a small town in rural Washington State. If it weren’t for prayer, she may never have become an engineer.
“I said to my mom, ‘I want to be an architect.’ And my parents said, ‘We’ll pray about it and see if God says yes. We don’t know any women in architecture.’ A week or two later, they said, ‘God said OK,’ and I got a chance to be that,” she recalls.
Dr. Freeman became the only black woman in the construction engineering program at Washington State University. But finding her niche after graduating in 1982 was difficult. First, she became a construction manager for a nuclear project for Rockwell International. When that job was done, she went to graduate school at Penn State and ran its engineering tutoring programs for a year as a part of her assistantship. Then she returned to private practice as a business owner, first working as a building contractor and then launching her own engineering consulting business. In 1991, Freeman completed graduate school, earning a master’s degree in architectural engineering at Penn State, and began directing cultural diversity programs at Lock Haven University. That is where she found her academic calling.
“Lock Haven is a liberal arts institution that accepts a large percentage of the students that apply,” says Freeman. “Watching these students transform into these incredible, bright young adults who believe they have a chance to succeed in life and try to help other students was incredibly rewarding.”
In 2000, Freeman returned to Penn State as director of Multicultural Engineering Programs, recruiting minority students from around the world and developing the kinds of support programs that would produce confident, successful black, Hispanic and Native American engineers. In 2004, she became assistant dean of Engineering Diversity and last year earned her doctorate in work force education and development.
Dr. Freeman has become one of the world’s foremost experts on providing STEM educational opportunities to underrepresented minorities and women.
“A lot has changed for the better,” she says. “I can see so much progress…. Although issues of race are still a large consideration, educational access has gotten better. And that’s a very, very good thing.”
Dr. Janice A. Lumpkin Educator of the Year
Mary W. Stroud
Senior Laboratory Instructor in Chemistry, Xavier University, Ohio
As a young chemistry instructor teaching undergraduates at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, earning the trust and respect of her students was a turning point for Mary Stroud.
“Many of my students had never had a black teacher by the time they arrived at Xavier,” she says.
Stroud grew up during the era of national civil rights upheaval, in the community of historically black Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). Her parents were both educators.
“It was an environment where I realized black people had accomplished a lot. I understood there were no limitations because of your ethnic background,” she says.
Reality in the world outside of Tuskegee was different. She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology at Converse College, a women’s institution in South Carolina.
“I arrived at the University of Cincinnati in 1979 (to get my graduate degree), and it was an overwhelmingly white male world,” she says. “That’s when I realized that the two advantages I thought I had were disadvantages.”
But she persevered. Teaching chemistry to undergraduates while earning her master’s degree in chemistry gave her both an academic focus and a lifelong calling.
At Xavier, Stroud goes beyond the basic introduction to chemistry for freshman or nursing students. Instead, she focuses on the applications of chemistry on the body and the environment, as well as the ethics of using chemicals.
“As a teacher, I want my influence to be longer lasting that just a single semester. I want their discussions and consideration of issues to continue,” she says.
Graduate Student of the Year
Mike Shinn Distinguished Member of the Year (Female)
Sophoria N. Westmoreland
Doctoral Student, University of Maryland, College Park
Sophoria Westmoreland knew with certainty what she wanted to do. She just didn’t know where and with whom. She had received bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering and general engineering through a joint program at Georgia Institute of Technology and Clark Atlanta University, but building things was not her goal.
“I decided I wanted to teach,” Westmoreland says, “but didn’t know what level.”
She took a job teaching engineering design to seventh and eighth graders at Grantham Academy for Engineering, a middle school in Houston, Texas, and found a spark she was looking for.
“It’s at that moment when the students just ‘get’ the information,” she says. “That’s special.”
Finding ways to present engineering concepts to different age and ethnic groups has become the focus of research for Westmoreland, who is now in the combined Ph.D. and M.S. in mechanical engineering program at the University of Maryland, College Park. A student in the doctoral program, she is working in the Design and Reliability of Systems research group, studying student learning and development and determining how students in capstone design courses learn the mechanical engineering design process.
Westmoreland joined NSBE Jr. as an 11th grader and was a member of NSBE during her years at Clark Atlanta and Georgia Tech. She is a member and graduate student coordinator for the collegiate chapter at the University of Maryland now. She is also mentor to the group, which won NSBE’s 2009–10 Distinguished Chapter of the Year Award.
“They get to see me every day and see what a graduate student does and what grad school is all about,” Westmoreland says.
Pre-College Initiative Program of the Year
Center for Youth in Engineering and Science (YES Center), Brooklyn, N.Y.
Beverly Johnson, Executive Director, YES Center
Excitement filled the air on the campus of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, as middle and high school students prepared their robots for the annual Botball Competition. The competition is hosted each year by the Youth in Engineering and Science (YES) Center and the NYU-Poly NSBE Chapter. All of the participating teams of students were scrambling frantically to assemble their robots using the fundamentals of programming they learned beforehand.
“We didn’t mention the M-word right away,” says Beverly Johnson, who serves as the associate dean of undergraduate admissions at NYU-Poly, executive director of the YES Center and advisor for the NYU-Poly NSBE Chapter. “Before we mention the M-word, for math, we let them go experiment and work on the robots and then we tell them that the way they were thinking is related to a math formula.”
NYU-Poly’s YES Center, along with the college’s NSBE Chapter, host and fund a Botball competition annually. This is the first of many strategies designed to introduce New York City children to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs.
YES developed from a program initially involving Brooklyn Technical High School and the Pratt Institute. The success of the original high school-oriented program grew into a city-wide effort that now include programs geared toward elementary, middle and high school students. In addition to having a mathematics prep course, the YES Center also offers a series of college preview programs in which high school students come on campus and take college courses. The charge for these courses is set at $200 per class — far below the standard cost of $4,000.
“We have junior high school students taking college courses in this program now,” Johnson says. “They walk away with a year’s worth of course credit. So instead of paying for four years of college wherever they may go, their parents only pay for three.”
Pre-College Initiative Student of the Year (Male)
Jonathan A. Thompson
Senior, Judson High School, Converse, Texas
One might think that maintaining a spot on the Judson High School varsity basketball squad would be enough to occupy whatever spare time a serious scholar-athlete might have. But for Jonathan Aviv Thompson, the hours spent on the court as a power forward for the Judson Rockets are just a break in a busy, productive routine.
Thompson, 17, has spent his teenage years assuming increasingly responsible roles, helping black students far beyond his South Texas home. Academically, Thompson is no slouch, and his late night studying shows in his grades. He has maintained a 3.77 average, ranks 35th out of 652 Judson seniors, earned a membership in the National Honor Society and scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT IIs.
He also tutors others. After leading successful sessions with his younger sister and her friends, Jonathan asked others in the San Antonio City Wide NSBE Jr. Chapter to join in a formal tutoring program. They contacted every public and private middle school in the San Antonio area offering their services. The chapter now tutors about 50 seventh and eighth graders each week in algebra and geometry, in two-hour sessions over winter break. The four-year program earned Jonathan a Presidential Volunteer Service Award, Bronze Level, from President Obama.
Jonathan has been chair of NSBE’s Region V Jr. Executive Board for the past two years and is the immediate past president of his NSBE Jr. chapter, now one of the nation’s largest. His summer internships included work at the University of Texas at San Antonio in biomedical engineering, an area he hopes to explore when he enters the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his father’s alma mater, in the fall.
Pre-College Initiative Student of the Year (Female)
Sydney S. Steward
Senior, South Mecklenburg High School, Charlotte, N.C.
It is not difficult for an outgoing teenager to find a host of interesting extracurricular activities to get involved with. It is more difficult, however, to find productive activities to benefit the community while excelling academically. But Sydney Steward seems to thrive on that challenge at South Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte, N.C., where she has been a leader in and outside of school.
The 18-year-old PCI Student of the Year has taken six AP courses and maintained a 3.9 academic average, while earning the Wellesley Book, Outstanding Chemistry 1 Student, Honors English 1 Student, 2008 PSAT High Scorer and National Achievement Program awards. She scored 2250 on the SAT exam, which earned her State Recognition for her high score, and she ranks 26th in a senior class of 394.
“Now I’m thinking of majoring in environmental science or engineering in college,” she says.
Sydney has led the NSBE Jr. chapter at her high school to compete against 25 other schools in engineering challenges held at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte. She is also president of the Environment Club, a member of the Student Council and section editor of the Yearbook.
But she also found time to help others, often through the Girl Scouts, and spurred South Mecklenburg High School NSBE Jr. to begin developing a tutoring program for fourth and fifth grade students in math and science at nearby Sterling Elementary School.
The nation in general and the engineering field in particular will benefit from the future contributions of Sydney Selena Steward.
Pre-College Initiative Director of the Year
Margaret C. Tarver
Advisor, Tri-Cities High School NSBE Jr. Chapter, East Point, Ga.
The National Science Foundation decided in 2001 to provide money to the Georgia Institute of Technology to “partner” with predominantly black high schools in the surrounding counties, a relationship that was supposed to provide enhanced science experiences for the pre-college kids. The catch was that no one really knew what a successful partnership looked like.
Enter Margaret C. Tarver, who grew up in segregated, rural Alabama and now teaches chemistry at Tri-Cities High School, a performing arts magnet school in East Point, Ga. Tarver recognized the value of expanded science opportunities for those in a school where the sciences took a back seat to liberal arts. She also knew that for the program to work, she would have to mentor both the graduate students from Georgia Tech and the Tri-Cities students in her new NSBE program.
Frustrated by the limitations of working in Tri-Cities’ labs, one Georgia Tech student proposed taking the students to the lab at Georgia Tech and letting them work on advanced projects at the engineering school.
“…It worked,” says Tarver, “and it was a great experience for our kids.”
For the past nine years, Tarver has overseen a two-way educational corridor between the kids at Tri-Cities High and the graduate chemistry, biology and engineering students at Georgia Tech. She became a “mentor and mother-figure” to a procession of Georgia Tech graduate students.
The program has made science a powerhouse at the arts magnet school. The students in the NSBE program there compete regularly now, and successfully, in the regional Try-Math-A-Lon competition, previously dominated by the area’s private schools. They also have conducted workshops at the NSBE Fall Regional Conference and held a camp for middle school students last summer.
Entrepreneur of the Year
Paul W. Foster
President/CEO, Foster CM Group, Inc.
In Paul Foster’s view, success is a product of opportunity. His first one came in the early ’70s, when his parents decided they would have their son attend high school outside of his district. In the district where he lived, two high schools were being forced to use one facility while a new facility was being reconstructed. Students from both campuses attended school only half a day.
“I used another person’s address to go to another school outside of my district, and it took me from a learning environment that could have been detrimental to me academically,” he says.
Foster took an engineering drafting class in high school and found he had a knack for it, winning a citywide competition. In 1975, he entered the architectural engineering program at Texas Tech University. Only four black students entered the program that year. Upon graduating, Foster worked for a few architectural firms before discovering he had an opportunity to work for a top 100 construction management (CM) firm. He moved up the ranks until he was assigned to an airport program in Florida. After completing that project, he returned to San Antonio, where opportunity stepped in again.
“The person who originally hired me at the CM firm where I was employed had a contract to work on the Alamo Dome,” Foster says. “…The president of the firm called me and asked if I would be interested in starting a Program/Construction Management firm and be a (minority) subconsultant to them. It was a blessing from God.”
That project was followed by a long dry period, then another opportunity presented itself: a $175-million convention center expansion project. This project gave Foster CM Group the opportunity to expand its business.
“This time I knew I had better start looking out for the next job…. We now have a team of staff responsible for developing business, and that, along with over 35 technical professionals providing quality services, drives us to the success we have had,” Foster says.
That success involves managing major construction programs around the Southeast region of the U.S., in markets that include sports, government, education, aviation, health care, water/waste water and transportation.
Lifetime Achievement in Industry
Kofi A. Mensah, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, General Mills – Riverside Technical Center
If you have ever had Pillsbury’s Toaster Strudels or related treats, savored Kentucky Fried Chicken’s hot biscuits, bitten into a hot pizza from Pizza Hut, or taken home from the grocery store Grands or any of the myriad Pillsbury ready-to-bake pastries, then Kofi A. Mensah, Ph.D. was your chef.
Dr. Mensah, who emigrated from Ghana nearly 40 years ago, is a food process engineer. He is the one concerned with heat transfer as it pertains to manufacturing, warming or cooking prepared foods; the freezing and its effect on uncooked or partially cooked products; and the packaging of foods — particularly breads — so they do not rise until the package is opened and they are ready for cooking.
As one of only two Senior Fellows in the Research and Development department of General Mills, Inc., Dr. Mensah has a hand in engineering the products and processing equipment used in many of the company’s products.
Dr. Mensah began his journey from Ghana when he received a Canadian government scholarship to pursue a degree in agricultural engineering at the University of Guelph in Ontario. The program was evenly divided between traditional agricultural engineering needs — designing tractors and combines — and biological engineering, which included food engineering and waste management. That exposure led to internships with Massey-Ferguson and General Foods, and his future avocation. Dr. Mensah moved to the U.S. to earn first a master’s degree in agricultural process engineering from The Ohio State University, and then a doctorate in food process engineering.
In nearly three decades, he has worked his way up through the R&D ranks at the food giant and, along the way, earned a patent for the development of dough processing equipment and a second filed for dough sheeting and laminating. In his spare time, he also serves as a board member of the Ghanaian Association of Minnesota.
Corporate Community Service
Harris Corporation
Jeffrey S. Shuman, Vice President of Human Resources and Corporate Relations, Harris Corporation
Harris Corporation, the Florida-based electronics communications and information technology company, is one of the world’s largest designers and providers of broadcast equipment, U.S. government intelligence communications gear and tactical radio systems. Harris’ headquarters have enough to do keeping track of the production of 15,500 employees in 150 locations around the world.
But the company also felt a need to help keep track of the development of elementary school kids in the Booker T. Washington section of Melbourne, a city with the region’s highest density of poverty and juvenile crime. So when approached for help by the Brevard Neighborhood Development Coalition, Harris led a drive to create the Dorcas Outreach Center for Kids. The DOCK, as it is called, is a 3,300-square-foot center where youth receive both hot meals and tutoring in an IT-rich environment, engage in supervised recreational activities and participate in enrichment classes exposing them to the arts and promoting an enhanced self-image.
“We put $150,000 down to win a matching grant and start the resource center. Then our employees put in over 16,000 hours of work and built five Habitat for Humanity homes around the center, at a cost of about $50,000 each,” Harris Manager Lisa Stigall reports.
That effort helped lead a revitalization of the area.
Harris has focused foundation and personnel support on a variety of pre-college math and science programs. On the college level, Harris provides generous financial and other support for engineering programs.
“Social responsibility is a big part of being a company,” Stigall says. “We strive to be the best community citizen we can be.”
Corporate/Education Partnership
CPS Energy Distinguished Fellows Program, CPS Energy, Inc.
Anthony Edwards, Retired Vice President, CPS Energy, Inc.
In San Antonio, Texas, students at Sam Houston High School received a big boost from CPS Energy in 2006. The school had received an unacceptable rating from the Texas Education Agency, based on the low performance of its students on math achievement tests. Sam Houston, which did not offer physics, calculus or college-level courses in science, had little to offer aspiring engineers or scientists.
So CPS Energy engineered an educational merger. It partnered with the University of Texas, San Antonio (UTSA) to provide instructors in advanced math courses for students in the top 10 percent of their classes at Sam Houston High. Instruction takes place at a CPS Energy high-tech training facility near the school.
“There is a professor from UT San Antonio who comes over to the training facility early in the morning to meet the students before their normal school day starts,” says Anthony Edwards, retired CPS vice president. “They take the pre-calculus course before regular classes start. We provide the supplies the professor needs and the tools; the University provides the professors. We also provide engineers to come and speak to the students in mentor roles. We try to put minority folks in front of these students so they can learn about life in the industry. And they have the experience of doing actual college-level work.”
The courses provide six semester hours of college credit. Students can also take an exam at the end of the final semester for an additional three semester hours.
The partnership with UTSA on behalf of Sam Houston High School has been a major success. Of the first 50 students enrolled in the program, all have gone on to college. For those who chose to enroll in UTSA, CPS has provided more than $60,000 in scholarships. And the program has now been expanded to include students from five additional high schools.
Corporate Diversity Leadership
General Mills Diversity Scholarship, General Mills, Inc.
Denise Holloman, Director of Manufacturing Engineering, General Mills, Inc.
Thousands of people were suffering from disease, hunger and malnutrition in Zambia and Malawi — two of the poorest countries in Africa — because of a lack of agricultural technology, funding and access to clean water. It is the kind of expertise that General Mills, Inc., the giant food company, has plenty of.
“We don’t market any products in those two countries. But in this case, two employees in our technical group had ties to those countries and saw a need,” says General Mills Vice President Stephanie Lilak.
So the company’s domestic “Nourishing Lives” program was expanded across the ocean, and the knowledge and time of General Mills’ scientists, engineers, agronomists, nutritionists and foundation executives went to work. They developed “sustainable agricultural” projects and taught the farming and food processing techniques through the newly created African Women and Children’s Hunger Project. To help villagers develop fiscal independence, the food giant developed a savings and loan program to finance microlending among 2,800 women. While the parents are working the fields, some 4,400 children in the participating villages are fed daily in the local schools.
“We support humanitarian and research-oriented projects,” says Lilak, “and it is meant to facilitate humanitarian needs. All of our employees are invited to be involved in this project, and those who (do) get sent there at company expense. More than 100 of our employees have worked on these projects.”
The African projects are just another facet of General Mills’ commitment to diversity.
“We think it makes us a better employer,” says Lilak. “We are a better corporate citizen when we have representation in our work force that represents the world.”
Mike Shinn Distinguished Member of the Year (Male)
Carl McGill
Doctoral Candidate in Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
Carl McGill was two months old when his father earned a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota and took his wife and American-born son back to their native Liberia. Seven years later, young Carl was back as a war refugee facing the cultural challenges of an immigrant in a new land. Education, said his parents, was his ticket to success, and he applied himself in school.
He excelled in math and science — as well as football and basketball — and participated in summer programs designed to introduce minorities to careers in engineering and technology, at Claflin University and South Carolina State University.
“That’s where I decided I wanted to be an engineer,” McGill says. “And at that time, my mother, who had been a banker in Liberia, was working in nursing. From that I became interested in engineering and the medical profession.”
He entered Clemson University’s biosystems engineering program. Outside of the classroom, he was introduced to the NSBE chapter, its academic excellence programs and its tutoring and mentoring programs for pre-college students.
“That kind of community involvement was new for me. It was a chance to give something back, and I enjoyed it,” McGill says.
McGill served on NSBE’s Region II Executive Board from 2005 to 2006, while completing his senior year and filling a co-op position. The next fall, he entered the combined master’s and doctoral program in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. He earned the master’s degree in 2008 and is on track to earn his doctorate by 2012. He has not, however, stopped his involvement with NSBE. As a member of the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor NSBE chapter, McGill serves as a mentor to local high school students.
Alumni Extension Member of the Year
Ivy White
NSBE Central Ohio Alumni Chapter
Senior Buyer, Honda Manufacturing of America
For the freshman engineering major at The Ohio State University, the 2001 NSBE Annual Convention in Orlando was an eye-opener.
“It was my first NSBE conference,” says Ivy White. “…I had never heard of the organization prior to being at Ohio State. But the exposure to the profession and all those black people doing things: Smart, black people; successful black people; people who were interested in serving the community. It’s something I wanted to be a part of.”
White became an active member of Ohio State’s NSBE chapter. In 2003, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in industrial and systems engineering and went to work as a supply quality engineer for Honda and Acura. She now works in Honda’s North American Purchasing office, overseeing some $500 million in spending on brake systems. But she wanted to continue working with NSBE and was surprised to find there was no Alumni chapter in Columbus. She teamed up with Honda coworker Kristy Thompson and a few others in 2005 to reactivate the Central Ohio Alumni Extension Chapter, with Thompson as president and White as secretary.
“In 2007,” says White, “Kristy was asked to serve regionally, as chair-elect for Region IV. So I became chapter president…. We’ve now grown to 60 paid members, and we have a strong relationship with the Ohio State chapter.”
White, a native of Columbus, has worked to expand outreach programs at the pre-college level in her hometown, including an annual scholarship breakfast. In addition to serving as chapter president, White has served since 2008 as the regional Alumni Extension secretary and regional Alumni Extension programs chair. Under her stewardship, the Central Ohio AE Chapter has won both the National Face-Time Award for its Collegiate Initiative programs, as well as the Regional Alumni Chapter of the Year Award, two years in a row.
Alumni Extension Technologist of the Year
Jamie Haynes
NSBE Region V Member-at-Large
Aerospace Engineer, The Boeing Company
There are two elementary school experiences that mark the life of Jamie Haynes. The first came when she was a kid. The second came when she was a college student visiting with little kids as part of a NSBE program.
“When I grew up we had nothing,” Haynes recalls. “I really didn’t know a lot outside of my little town, a small part of Dayton called Huber Heights. But I had a mother who pushed me and who really opened my eyes, and I have known I wanted to be an engineer since middle school.”
Haynes grew up to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., and became an active member, then president, of the NSBE chapter. And that led to her second formative experience.
“I was a tutor,” Haynes recalls, “tutoring in a poor neighborhood in Daytona…. It’s absolutely vital that kids like that see a black woman. The reason I volunteer is because I wonder what if they don’t have a parent like I did? Then without our presence, they would have no idea what possibilities there are.”
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering, Haynes moved to Houston, where she works in The Boeing Company’s life support systems group, responsible for the Space Shuttle. In her new community, Haynes is a member of the NSBE Alumni chapter, which is developing a NSBE Jr. program at Goose Creek Memorial High School. Her husband, Richard Haynes, teaches chemistry there. The chapter has cosponsored minority students at Boeing facilities, in conjunction with the company’s “Engineer for a Day” program.
“I want to make sure they get into something they can get excited about,” Haynes says.
Roger Witherspoon is a journalist and author based in New York.
For full stories, subscribe to NSBE Magazine by sending $20 for a one-year subscription to NSBE Circulation, 205 Daingerfield Rd., Alexandria, VA 22314.