My and co-author, Renetta G. Tull’s paper, “Programmatic Interventions for Developing Diverse Global Eminent Faculty Scholars Through International Collaborations,” was accepted as part of the proceedings of the 2015 American Society of Engineering Education International Forum in Seattle, Washington.

Abstract: Participation in formal and informal mentoring networks is a critical mechanism through which engineering faculty accumulate the global academic capital necessary for career advancement. Often, due to their underrepresentation, the resulting isolation, and gendered structural barriers, female engineering faculty have less access to mentoring relationships than their male counterparts. As a result of racial and gendered barriers, however, women of color in engineering are even less likely than women from majority groups to have access to domestic U.S. mentoring networks and the critical international mentoring networks necessary for career advancement. To address this issue, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is building upon its highly successfully Eminent Scholar Mentoring program and International Engagement for Women of Color project to create the Global Engagement Eminent Scholar Network (GEESN).

This paper describes UMBC’s GEESN initiative, which has two components:  a 2-year formal international mentoring project that pairs U.S. women of color in engineering with a prominent international engineer in the their field and the participation of a delegation of GEESM participants at two international conferences 1) The Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI) and 2) the World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF). This presentation provides an overview of the literature and promising practices that inspired the formation of the GEESN initiative, as well as the development of both project components. To conclude, the paper discusses the steps for the GEESN and reflects on the potential for expanding and replicating this model at UMBC and other higher education institutions.