HISTORY
Sixteen years ago, Georgia Tech was faced with the challenge of increasing the number of advanced degrees it awarded to minority students. To address this challenge, Dr. William Wepfer, of the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Dr. John White, dean of Georgia Tech's College of Engineering, began to develop an initiative to target the problem through focused recruitment.
With committed support from the Institute's administration, White hired Robert Haley as director of Special Projects in the College of Engineering. Haley's first assignment was to build upon Georgia Tech's reputation as a leading engineering institution by developing a first-class program to attract potential minority graduate students. He conceptualized a program called FOCUS that would deliver a strong message about advanced education, while still focusing on the main goal—increasing Georgia Tech's minority graduation rates.
The vision for the FOCUS program was led by the inspiring words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: "Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy."
FOCUS proudly held its first annual program during the week of Dr. King's birthday celebration in 1992 and has since adopted the King holiday weekend as its annual program date.
FOCUS is first and foremost a graduate school marketing program. The program's goal is to increase minority student awareness of the benefits and increased opportunities of a graduate degree, then recruit them to pursue a graduate degree at Georgia Tech. However, if students do not choose to enroll at Georgia Tech, the hope of FOCUS is that they will at least choose another graduate school. The program is open to all students who meet the academic criteria and will find the program beneficial.
The very first FOCUS attracted 43 students. Each year since, student participation has grown, and FOCUS has attracted as many as 300 students from universities nationwide.
From the beginning, student participation in FOCUS has been by invitation only. Through the years, Tech has developed a strong network with historically black colleges and universities, and majority institutions have been supportive and cooperative in identifying their top students.
As numbers and reputation have increased, so has the scope of FOCUS. In 1994, FOCUS became more comprehensive, expanding to include Georgia Tech's other five colleges in addition to the College of Engineering. In 1997, the program, which was aimed at undergraduate seniors, also extended invitations to juniors in order to take the lead as the first graduate recruiting program to reach them. In 2000, the program expanded to include FOCUS Friends and FOCUS Fellows. The Friends encourages academically gifted high school seniors to explore the benefits of a Georgia Tech education. FOCUS Fellows encourages minority doctoral students who are one or two years away from graduation to consider an academic career.
In the sixteen years since FOCUS began, Georgia Tech has built a nationally recognized and frequently emulated program. FOCUS has raised the visibility of Georgia Tech and the awareness of graduate school. More than 1/3 of our African American graduate students have attended FOCUS, with a retention rate of 92 percent. According to Black Issues in Higher Education, Georgia Tech is now ranked first in the number of master's and doctoral degrees in engineering granted to African Americans.
Perhaps most importantly, more than 2,000 highly qualified minority undergraduate students have attended FOCUS and have been exposed to the merits of graduate education. These students are the future business, education, and political leaders of our country.