Due to its commitment to inclusiveness and student success, the CSULB College of Engineering has made dramatic gains in serving underrepresented students and attracting diverse faculty.
Over the past four years, the College of Engineering has steadily increased in American Society for Engineering Education rankings for attracting female faculty and awarding degrees to Hispanic and Asian-American students.
In the most recent ASEE statistics, the CSULB College of Engineering ranked 6th among U.S. universities in awarding undergraduate engineering degrees to Hispanic students. That compares with its 11th-place ranking in 2014 and an 8th-place ranking in 2016.
The College of Engineering in 2014 ranked 20th for awarding Bachelor of Science engineering degrees to Asian-American students, and in the most recent ASEE statistics, is 16th.
The College’s emphasis on closing the gender gap has paid off and it now ranks 5th for the percentage of women tenure/tenure-track faculty, up from 15th in 2014 and 16th in 2016. More than one-third of the 34 new full-time faculty hired by the College of Engineering since 2013 have been women.
“We are gratified that our efforts to serve the region’s diverse population and attract diverse new faculty are yielding results,” said Engineering Dean Forouzan Golshani. “Increasing the representation of women and underrepresented groups in engineering remains a high priority. Engineering and technology companies are focused on increasing diversity in their workforce, and increasing representation at the university level—in terms of both faculty and students—provides a strong foundation for those efforts.”
Another area where CSULB ranked high was in the ratio of bachelor’s recipients to faculty. The College now ranks second, up from 4th for previous three years.
ASEE’s latest annual report also underscores the continuing strength of CSULB’s engineering program as realted to student success. Whereas its headcount places it at rank 50th, the College ranked 32nd for the number of engineering degrees awarded in universities in the U.S. and Canada.
For individual engineering degree programs, CSULB ranked:
- 10th for electrical engineering
- 14th for civil engineering
- 30th for mechanical engineering
- 29th for computer science, and
- 29th for computer engineering
ASEE statistics are generated from hundreds of engineering schools in the U.S. and Canada each year. They are intended to provide students and administrators with a gauge of how well universities are performing in certain metrics.
CSULB overall also ranks high for diversity. In Diverse Issues in Higher Education’s most recent list of the Top 100 degree producers, CSULB ranked third in the nation in conferring baccalaureate degrees to minority students. The “Top 100” is a list of the best minority degree-awarding institutions of higher education in the United States.
Based on U.S. Department of Education data from the 2015-16 academic year (the most current data available), CSULB conferred bachelor’s degrees to 5,264 minority students, a number that represented 68 percent of all the baccalaureate degrees awarded at the university that year. Among individual ethnicities, CSULB ranked sixth nationally in awarding bachelor’s degrees to Hispanic students and 10th to Asian Americans.