GM Support Paves New Opportunities for McCormick Engineering Undergraduates
The spring before his freshman year, Manny Gonzalez, a junior and civil engineering major at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, applied to the Hodge EXCEL Scholars summer program, an intensive introductory period to the first quarter of engineering students. He did it on a whim after Ellen Worsdall, Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at McCormick, invited him to. The program ended up defining his Northwestern experience.
“It was at the height of COVID and it was hard interacting with everyone else,” Gonzalez said, “so the counselors would host these chill hangout sessions over Zoom, and I would go to some of them and became friends with a lot of people that I still consider my best friends now. Without that program I would have been completely alone with all those super hard classes that we had to take in the fall.”
Northwestern Engineering hosts the Hodge EXCEL summer program for first-generation college students and students graduating from high schools where they didn’t have the opportunity to take engineering-focused classes. Students who have already been accepted into Northwestern are invited to apply for the five-week program where they engage in a crash course of their upcoming fall quarter. As part of their broader partnership with Northwestern, General Motors (GM) supports the Hodge EXCEL program by providing funds to pay student counselors like the ones that helped Gonzalez. Being former students of the program themselves, the counselors act as both a teaching assistant and a resident assistant by helping students navigate the program’s classes and prepare for their college experience.
In addition to the Hodge EXCEL program, GM also supports the Northwestern chapters of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) to provide students a space in which to meet peers with similar identities.
“GM’s goal is to create resources for any student who is an engineering major,” said Worsdall. “The programming that the organizations provide are geared for all fields of engineering.”
Both NSBE and SHPE have long attracted students from across all STEM fields, not just students in engineering. Supporting organizations like them means directly benefiting the students by providing active ways to build a strong sense of community and belonging. Both organizations use the funds to send students to national conferences where they have networking opportunities to meet other Black and Hispanic/Latino engineers from all corners of the US.
“On the first day, there were like 13,000 people in the stadium,” said Haneen Awadelsayed, a freshman studying civil engineering at McCormick. She was one of the 26 NSBE members who went to the NSBE Annual Convention this spring in Kansas City, Missouri. “I don't really see that many engineers of color usually. It was really motivating to see so many professionals, people who were in our shoes and are now doing big things.”
Marisabel Aguilar, a junior studying computer engineering and treasurer of SHPE, attended the SHPE National Convention in Orlando, Florida last fall with more than 20 other members, the highest attendance in recent years.
“That is where the GM donations were really helpful,” she said. “SHPE doesn’t have that much money to take so many people to the convention, but luckily I was able to work with Ellen, and she told us there's more funding available for us because of these donations.”
The sense of community that these two conferences provided was the highlight for both Awadelsayed and Aguilar. It was nice to see companies at the conference putting in resources to reach people from a Hispanic background, said Aguilar. Getting used to giving elevator pitches and approaching companies in order to advocate for themselves was nerve racking but ultimately very valuable for both of them. For many NSBE and SHPE members, the conferences were also great places to network. Some SHPE members even received job offers at the conference.
“It really was a good opportunity,” Awadelsayed said, “and I think because we were so fortunate for it to be covered, I took it more seriously. I think a part of my motivation was like ‘I don't think I'll get this opportunity in the future, so it's better to take it now.’”
Following his Hodge EXCEL experience, Gonzalez applied to be a counselor for the summers before his sophomore and junior year because he wanted to give back to the program. Some of his former students still text him with questions about their academic and social lives and he still sees them using the connections forged during the summers of 2021 and 2022.
“I love the program,” he said. “I want to help the kids that are coming in to feel more welcome and give them community so that when they go in they're not grasping at straws trying to find out how to find friends and succeed academically. I'm also extremely grateful to GM and every single supporter of the program, because just being a student of it really set the trajectory for me at Northwestern.”