Purdue Engineering does a great job at problem solving and coming up with groundbreaking new ideas. As an exemplar, our Minority Engineering Program recently became the first in the country to have a position and programming focused on graduate engineering students. Going further back in Purdue Engineering history, the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) was founded at Purdue by a group of revolutionary Black undergraduate and graduate engineering students.

But, many of these pioneering initiatives were a post hoc response to a major problem that Purdue already had. Purdue Engineering needs to do a better job of owning its problems, anticipating them based on clear and actionable research and data, and creating a positive, productive environment where these problems don’t come up in the first place. To be more specific, we need to do a better job of recruiting Black students, faculty, and staff and resourcing them to be successful. Purdue NSBE’s recent call to action provides clear steps that our college should sign on to and prioritize; in Engineering as well as across the Campus, the students have led the way with the BlackatPurdue initiative, which also includes recommendations for clear change that Purdue Engineering should support. Purdue Engineering needs to be an environment in which Black engineering scholars can flourish, not one where we patch things up after the fact.

I will use my platform as an educator to teach and advise my Black students in a way that recognizes their unique assets and to teach my non-Black students in a way that requires them to recognize the assets that their Black peers bring to class. As an educator, I will hold myself and others accountable as a teacher, an advisor, a colleague, and a research group leader to do engineering research that is thoughtful, critical, and can make real change. In my scholarship and my practice, I will use the power and privilege I have to collaborate and uplift my Black colleagues at Purdue, across the country, and around the world. I will follow their lead, and I will use my voice to sign on to and support the Black voices of leadership in NSBE’s call to Action and the @BlackatPurdue recommendations. I will use my vote and leverage as a tenured member of the faculty and on relevant committees to push for concrete commitment to things like hiring and rewarding Black faculty, staff, and students, and creating incentives and accountability in the places where I and this institution have failed. That’s the community I want to have around me.

It’s not enough for us to take a giant leap forward if we’re complicit in digging the holes that are right in front of us. Black Lives Matter. Black Engineers Matter.