Tuskegee University Establishes New Scholarship Program for Women Engineering Students

Historically Black Tuskegee University in Alabama has established the Lily McNair Women in Engineering Leadership Scholarship Initiative. The scholarship program, named to honor the university’s first woman president who took office on July 1, 2018, will provide tuition assistance for women engineering students at the university. In addition, the program will provide learning and development opportunities for women engineering students by engaging their professional counterparts who have already charted their own successful career paths. Students will be able to interact with these role models through on-campus programs and selective shadowing opportunities at these women’s places of employment.

Heshmat Aglan, dean of the College of Engineering at Tuskegee University, explains that “this endowed scholarship fund is part of a larger Engineering Women Leadership Development Initiative at Tuskegee University, which seeks to increase the number and percentage of African-American women in engineering, as well as to better prepare them for success after graduation.”

To be eligible for the scholarship initiative, applicants must have demonstrated their commitment to leadership activities – such as active participation in professional organizations, honor societies, and volunteerism – and possess a minimum 3.25 grade point average.

Before becoming president of Tuskegee University, Dr. McNair served as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Wagner College on Staten Island in New York City. Earlier, she was associate provost for research and a professor of psychology at Spelman College in Atlanta. She has also taught at the State University of New York at New Paltz and the University of Georgia and was a psychologist at the counseling center at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Dr. McNair is a graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey, where she majored in psychology. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in psychology from Stony Brook University of the State University of New York System.