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New Endowment Supports Snelsire, Sawyer and Robinson Clemson Career Workshop

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Clemson career workshop

Anthony L. Mattis ’86, chair of the fundraising committee for the endowment, spoke during the gala.


Since its beginning in 1977, the Clemson Career Workshop has invested in academically talented, underrepresented high school students by introducing them to Clemson through a summer residential program. The program’s original goals were to increase the number of students of color at Clemson in general as well as students of color majoring in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The workshop provides college preparation, networking and residential campus experiences.
Last October, a fundraising gala was held to honor the two founders and an outstanding alumnus of the program by renaming the CCW as the Snelsire, Sawyer and Robinson Clemson Career Workshop. The event also celebrated the establishment of an endowment to provide resources for the ongoing operation of the workshop. The program’s advisory board set a goal of $1 million in support of the program, with a kickoff pledge goal of $250,000 to establish the initial fund.
The three honorees have dedicated their lives to supporting STEM education at Clemson. Robert Snelsire is an emeritus professor of electrical engineer-ing who served as the director of the then College of Engineering’s Minority Program from 1977-1991. He founded the Programs for Educational Enrichment and Retention (PEER) and the Math Excellence Workshop. His engineering workshop was the inspiration for the Clemson Career Workshop.
Corrine Sawyer is an emerita professor of English. In 1982, she helped Snelsire expand the minority recruitment engineering workshop to a summer program, officially creating the Clemson Career Workshop.
Darryl Leshay Robinson is an alumnus, former head counselor and longtime advocate of the CCW. After earning undergrad-uate and graduate degrees in industrial engineering, he continually gave back to his alma mater through the CCW. Throughout his career in executive management, Robinson has been devoted to inspiring high school students, showing them a path toward academic success and professional achievement.
For more than 40 years, the career workshop has played a major role in attracting talented, high-achieving students from across South Carolina to Clemson. The newly established endowment will ensure that the SSRCCW continues its work for many future generations.

Bridging the Gap

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The United States is now more racially and ethnically diverse than it has ever been, but that diversity is not yet reflected in the sciences. In 2017, traditionally underrepresented minorities — African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders — accounted for nearly a third of the U.S. population, yet only about 17 percent were employed as scientists and engineers in the country. Several years ago, Meredith Morris, an associate professor of genetics and biochemistry who teaches molecular biochemistry at Clemson, began to notice that racial and ethnic gap reflected in her classes.

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Women, diversity in STEM focus of $3.4 million grant

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Like many universities, Clemson struggles with attracting and retaining women and underrepresented minorities as faculty. That problem is magnified in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. Across the campus, 35 percent of full-time faculty are women. In STEM departments, the percentage drops to 19. When racial diversity is factored in, the statistics are even grimmer. Only one of the 509 STEM faculty members is an African-American woman; two are Hispanic women.
In an effort to improve those numbers, Clemson has launched an initiative funded by a $3.4 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to create an inclusive academic culture so women and underrepresented minorities are encouraged to enter and remain in academia. While the national initiative is called ADVANCE: Increasing Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers, Clemson’s program is nicknamed Tigers ADVANCE, and it has a greater goal: to build a culture that encourages diversity, inclusiveness and acceptance.
“The impact these STEM fields have on our society is immeasurable,” said Robert Jones, Clemson’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and co-principal investigator of the grant. “We need diverse ideas and perspectives in the academy and in our workforce to tackle the greatest challenges we, and future generations, will face.”
The grant application process, spearheaded by civil engineering professor Sez Atamturktur, took more than two years and countless hours from more than 40 faculty, staff and students. The group identified five major challenges to women in STEM faculty positions at Clemson and established these corresponding goals:
• Transform the culture and improve the campus climate to reduce bias and implicit bias against women and minority faculty.
• Increase the representation of women in STEM fields.
• Ensure equitable workload distributions so appointments to committees, special projects and other non-academic activities are assigned equally across the faculty.
• Enhance faculty mentoring and leadership development to support all faculty and increase retention.
• Implement family-friendly policies to help improve recruitment and retention of world-class faculty.
With Tigers ADVANCE, Clemson will increase the number of women being considered for faculty positions and put measures in place to retain female members. “We will strive to match the representation of women in faculty positions to the number of candidates available for those positions in the national pool,” Atamturktur said.
Of the 14,499 faculty applicants to Clemson between 2010 and 2014, 23 percent were women, 10.7 percent were minority women and 0.7 percent were African-American women. Of all eligible doctoral degree graduates in the country, 53 percent were women, 15 percent were minority women and 7 percent were African-American women.
“Our search committees absolutely are doing a good job of identifying talented women and bringing them to campus,” Atamturktur said. “The problem is the number of women in our applicant pools is very, very low. We’re starting with fewer options.”
Likewise, although women receive tenure and promotions at rates equal to men, women leave Clemson at rates higher than men. Between 2011 and 2014, 56 percent of assistant professors (pre-tenure faculty) who left were women. Among STEM faculty, 28 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty members who left were women, although women made up only 19 percent of the faculty.
While the NSF grant specifically supports women in STEM fields, Clemson will make its own investment to extend Tigers ADVANCE to non-STEM departments. “We believe this is the only way to achieve institution-wide impact and sustainable transformation,” Atamturktur said. “Five years from now our campus should be a lot more diverse with a more inclusive culture and more openness to new ideas.”