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Texas Industry Needs Electrical Engineers: UH Helps Meet Demand
By
Amanda Siegfried, UH Office of External Communications

Scholarships, smaller classes and summer camps for high-school girls are some of the ways the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering will help meet industry's demand for more electrical engineers and bring more women into the profession.

A $326,511 grant to the UH Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) will be used to increase enrollment in the department - including attracting more women to the field - and improve retention rates.

The funding is part of the $4.5 million in grants Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced on April 1 that are intended to increase the number of Texas students earning degrees in technology fields such as electrical engineering and computer science. Twenty-three Texas universities received grants, which are paid by the state and by Texas companies.

"Nationwide, the unemployment rate for engineers is less than 2 percent, and the demand for electrical and computer engineers continues to be strong," says Fritz Claydon, chair of the UH Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Our enrollment has increased 35 percent over the past three years, and we have about 700 undergraduates in classes now. Recently our bachelor's degree graduates have earned starting salaries from $50,000 to $60,000."

Claydon said by implementing new programs, he expects the number of UH's ECE graduates to increase in the next five years, from 80 in 2002 to about 130 in 2006.

The new UH grant will fund three initiatives:

  • ECE Redshirt Camps are free weeklong academic camps for ECE students to help better prepare them for the rigors of sophomore-level courses. The camps will focus on academic excellence and leadership skills, covering topics such as problem solving, working in teams and applying math to engineering problems. Students completing a camp will receive a $250 scholarship for the next year. One-week camps in late July and August 2002 will be held -- download the pdf application (applications are due by May 1, 2002).
  • GRADE Camps - Girls Reaching and Demonstrating Excellence in Engineering - will be free summer camps for high-school girls to gain first-hand experience with engineering. Participants will interact with professional women engineers and work with women ECE undergraduate mentors on problem solving, leadership skills and engineering topics, including completing a robotics project. Those finishing the camp will receive a $1,000 scholarship to UH if they major in electrical engineering.
  • Class size for sophomore ECE lecture sessions will be cut in half, reducing the teacher/student ratio to about 25 to one. Additional graduate students and teaching fellows will be hired, and mandatory workshops will be added to sophomore classes to assist students with problem solving.

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