New engineering program a boon

PRINCESS ANNE, Md. (AP)— Maurice Lanier fell in love with science in elementary school when he saw a robot that moved when people snapped their fingers.

Now the 25-year-old from Oxon Hill is studying to be an electrical engineer, and because of state approval this year of an engineering program at the University of Maryland at Eastern Shore, Mr. Lanier will be able to finish school at his home campus.

“It was the best news I’d ever gotten,” Mr. Lanier, a junior, said of the state Higher Education Commission’s approval of the engineering program for the university. Before, Maryland Eastern Shore students studying engineering completed their bachelor’s degrees at the University of Maryland at College Park.

The program was approved at a time when alarms have been raised nationally about the scarcity of black engineers. Only about a dozen historically black colleges have engineering programs that are independent of formerly whites-only schools, and historically black Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta closed its engineering school last year.

“There’s a lack of not just African-Americans, but Americans in general going into STEM fields,” an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields, said Carl B. Mack, director of the National Society of Black Engineers.

“The reality is, when you look around, you don’t see African-American engineers.”

Administrators at the university say the new program, the first on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, will prove a boon for economic development in the area and the development of high-tech industries. The program offers degrees in mechanical, electrical, computer and aeronautical engineering and has about 50 students.

“This is going to help us meet the emerging markets,” said Ayodele Alade, dean of the university’s School of Business and Technology, which includes the new engineering program. The lack of a four-year engineering program on the Eastern Shore, he said, “has impeded the level of progress in this region.

“It has limited the interest of students in coming to this area. It has affected the market conditions in this region.”

The program will also give the university more prestige, said Charles Williams, vice president for academic affairs.

“It’s going to be fantastic for this university,” he said, standing outside the program’s new flight simulator, where aviation and engineering students learn about the mechanics of flight.

Not everyone is excited about the program, though. The state already has one of the nation’s largest engineering schools at a historically black college, Morgan State University in Baltimore. Worried that another engineering program in the state would sap resources, Morgan State opposed the creation of a full program at the University of Maryland at Eastern Shore.

“If they put a program there and don’t adequately fund that program, that is a concern,” said Eugene M. DeLoatch, dean of the School of Engineering at Morgan State, which also offers masters’ and doctoral degrees in engineering.

Mr. DeLoatch said he worries Morgan State and Maryland Eastern Shore may both be fighting for the same state dollars, “so we’re all going to have mediocre engineers.”

“We’ve got to adequately invest in our educational systems,” Mr. DeLoatch said. “If that program opens up with inadequate funding, it’s not going to have the effect we’d like it to have. These programs are not inexpensive to run, so I just think we should keep an eye on what it costs to run these programs.”