Winter 2008 — Vol. 61, No. 1
PEER TO PEER
by Liz Newall
Photography by Craig Mahaffey, Patrick Wright
Minority science and engineering students at Clemson have a network with nearly 1,000 success stories.
The real value of a “nationally acclaimed student program” lies in the positive ways it affects the students involved — the way it connects them — the way they take the experience with them as alumni and in turn affect other people. In computer lingo, it’s “connectivity.”
Clemson’s Programs for Educational Enrichment and Retention — PEER — is such a program. In fact, it’s considered among the top in the nation for retaining minority engineering and science students.
PEER serves African American and Hispanic/Latino American students in Clemson’s College of Engineering and Science, featuring an innovative proactive mentoring program, the Math Excellence Workshop, the PEER/WISE Study Hall, counseling, networking and many other opportunities to give as well as receive support.
“PEER connects minority engineering and science students to one another,” says director and co-founder Sue Lasser. “Each group of students instructs and inspires the next. Expertise is handed down from year to year.”
PEER works. Since its inception, approximately 900 PEER students have gone on to earn undergraduate degrees at Clemson, and many have earned graduate and postgraduate degrees.
As a result, among predominantly white schools, Clemson is in the top 10 in the nation in numbers of African American students graduating in technical fields each year (Center for Institutional Data Exchange at the University of Oklahoma). Black Clemson students graduate in these fields at the same rate as their white counterparts, about 48 percent of each entering class. The national average for black engineering students is 21 percent.
PEER was founded 20 years ago by Robert Snelsire, an electrical engineering professor, and Sue Lasser, then a graduate student in guidance and counseling, in response to a disturbing trend. They had noticed that African American students dropped out of Clemson’s engineering programs at a much higher rate than other students, with no academic reason.
They looked at other aspects of the students’ lives and learned that minority students in engineering majors appeared to have less of a support system in place. On the flip side, they discovered a wealth of untapped support in the minority upperclassmen at Clemson who had stayed with the major.
‘Oasis in a big sea’
Figures are important, but the people matter most — for example, husband and wife Donna and Corey Smalls, members of the very first PEER class in 1987.
“PEER was an oasis in a big sea,” says 1991 electrical engineering graduate Donna Poindexter Smalls, who was the first in her family to go to college and who initially felt daunted by her new surroundings. She says the program helped her navigate the college system from what courses to take to how to talk to professors.
Electrical engineering graduate (1992) Mordecai “Corey” Smalls says, “PEER has been a catalyst for my academic and personal success. It demystified the avenues to success and provided role models in mentors, faculty and staff.” He adds, “It gave me lifelong friends, including my wife!”
Donna went on to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She’s currently the HMI/SCADA (human machine interface/supervisory control and data acquisition) product manager at Schneider-Electric, a global industrial automation/electrical distribution manufacturing company based in Paris, France. In addition, she’s working on an MBA from East Carolina University, and, with Corey’s help, raising their two children.
Corey also earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech. He’s now a lead engineer with 3 Phoenix Inc., a company that provides systems, hardware and software design services primarily to government and U.S. Department of Defense entities.
Mechanical engineering graduate (2002) Andre Loyd credits the PEER office in his becoming a student leader in the National Society of Black Engineers. “The office was a pillar of support as I ran an engineering high school outreach project entitled the Pre College Initiative program.”
He also credits Lasser in his pursuing graduate school. He’s currently a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University where he’s the James B. Duke Fellow and a National Science Foundation Fellow. He’s studying the structural properties of the pediatric head for the development of child crash-test dummies and child head-injury prevention.
Computer engineering graduate (2003) Janet Pope says, “PEER helped me succeed and graduate from Clemson, which led me to Duke University to obtain my master’s in engineering management.” She’s a senior consultant/technical design specialist at Capgemini U.S. where she’s had the opportunity to gain experience in an assortment of areas while traveling throughout the United States.
Automotive engineering graduate Carl Lamar ’07 points out PEER’s role in helping him develop a social network that, in turn, has helped him develop his professional network. He says, “PEER kept me in the know about social events, academic club meetings and gave me someone to sit with at football games. Most importantly, it was an outlet to express my frustrations or happiness.”
Lamar has a fellowship through the GEM Consortium and is working on a master’s degree in automotive engineering at CU-ICAR’s Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Graduate Engineering Center.
Keys to PEER
PEER’s success revolves around its innovative programs.
Proactive mentoring
PEER automatically assigns mentors to all incoming African American and Hispanic/Latino American students in the College of Engineering and Science. PEER matches these new students (freshman and transfer) in groups of eight to 10, with minority junior, senior, or graduate engineering or science student mentors who share their majors. Within three days of arriving on campus, each student is contacted by phone or email by his or her PEER mentor, beginning a yearlong program of individual and group meetings.
PEER’s proactive mentoring concept has been duplicated at other institutions around the country and has attracted interest from as far away as South Africa. In recognition of this novel approach, Lasser was awarded one of the first national Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Engineering and Mathematics Mentoring. Both Lasser and Snelsire have received Clemson’s Martin Luther King Award for Excellence in Service. And Lasser was named a Distinguished Centennial Alumnus from the College of Education.
Math Excellence Workshop
The Math Excellence Workshop is sponsored by the National Science Foundation through the Louis Stokes-S.C. Alliance for Minority Participation, by the College of Engineering and Science and by Duke Energy. It has earned national recognition with a Noel-Levitz Retention Excellence Award.
In the summer, students take their first math class at Clemson free of charge. In addition, they attend a two-hour daily seminar in collaborative learning, featuring honors-level work in their respective classes. These students consistently outperform other students in their summer mathematics classes and persist to graduation in related majors at a significantly increased rate.
Sneak Preview
Sneak Preview is the primary recruiting event for PEER. High school juniors and seniors are nominated by math teachers or guidance counselors throughout the state, and up to 60 students can be accommodated at a time. They spend the weekend at Clemson, matched with a host, attending classes, experiencing dorm life, touring campus or meeting with key faculty and staff. Up to 80 percent of students who have attended a Sneak Preview have enrolled at Clemson.
More services
PEER offers students personal and academic counseling as well as seminars and social events throughout their college careers. The PEER office provides a test bank, computers and a printer, and a lounge area where students can use these facilities or chat with the staff and study with classmates. PEER also has a free drop-in tutoring service open five evenings per week.
WISE
In 1995, a parallel program for women students, Women In Science and Engineering (WISE), opened at Clemson. An outgrowth of PEER, WISE has added unique features to encourage female students to consider technical majors, with a number of different K-12 outreach programs.
It features programs for Girl Scouts and other young females; a camp for incoming Clemson freshman females majoring in engineering, science or math; the women in science and engineering residence (a living and learning community); and other opportunities.
Directed by Serita Acker, WISE continues to work with PEER to serve all underrepresented students in the College of Engineering and Science at Clemson. The Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network honored WISE and Acker with the 2005 Women in Engineering Initiative Award for the program’s success in attracting and retaining women to science-based majors.
To find out more about PEER and WISE, go to www.ces.clemson.edu/peer or call (864) 656-0976. You can also email PEER director Sue Lasser at slasser@clemson.edu and WISE director Serita Acker at wserita@clemson.edu.
Support
In addition to support from the National Science Foundation through LS-SCAMP, Fluor Daniel, the College of Engineering and Science, and Duke Energy, PEER and WISE have been recipients of recent gifts from Eastman Chemical Co. and Milliken & Co.
Individuals can also help PEER and WISE succeed. For example, Doug V. ’64 and Mary Lynn Smith recently made a $10,000 gift to WISE for WISE CHOICE, which brings female high school students from across the state and beyond to campus to encourage them to choose Clemson engineering or science for their higher education.
Private gift support, from individuals and corporations, is critical in helping PEER and WISE continue to make a difference at Clemson and far beyond. If you would like to make a gift to PEER or WISE, call the College of Engineering and Science development office at (864) 656-5655 or go to www.clemson.edu/isupportcu.