Minority Engineering Education in the United States, 1945 to the Present

Drexel University, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

SES 0115208 Amy Slaton, Drexel University Minority Engineering Education in the United States, 1945 to the Present Despite ongoing governmental and institutional attempts at diversification, African Americans and other minorities remain severely underrepresented among university graduates in engineering fields. Many quantitative studies have measured this inequity and the impacts of individual educational reforms, but few scholars have explored historical or epistemological patterns behind the successes and failures of diversification efforts. Using archives, artifacts, and approximately 35 interviews with engineering instructors and graduates, this project compares engineering education in American universities attended primarily by black students and white students since 1945 to establish such an overview. Based on four pairs of schools, representing each of four states and four historical eras, this study describes the broad political conditions in which these universities functioned, and provides detailed accounts of practices within their engineering classrooms and laboratories. The cases of Lincoln University (Missouri) and the University of Missouri will illustrate conditions during the science and engineering "manpower" crisis immediately following World War II. Technical programs at Maryland State College and the University of Maryland will illustrate the impacts of integration as separate-but-equal doctrines fell away in the 1950s. The histories of two urban schools, the Kennedy-King College and Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, will reflect the coalescence of civil rights activism and legislation in the 1960s and 1970s; and comparisons of Prairie View and Texas A&M Universities will document the ascendance of political conservatism and a "post-industrial" economy in the 1980s and 1990s. Engineering curricula and course materials varied greatly among these settings, and this project treats post-secondary technical education since 1945 as both a reflection of prevailing social ideologies about race and a shaping force of those values. It explores, overall, the uncertain connection between technical and social modernity in contemporary America.