Director of UCI’s California Alliance for Minority Participation appointed to national board
Pheather R. Harris named president-elect of National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates
The National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates has announced Pheather R. Harris as president-elect. The director of UCI’s California Alliance for Minority Participation within the School of Education’s Center for Educational Partnerships, Harris will assist the president, Whitney B. Gaskins, with her duties. She will officially become president at the end of Gaskins’ term, in the fall of 2025.
Harris has published numerous articles on access, diversity, equity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering and math and has worked in postsecondary education for over two decades. She is the principal investigator on an interdisciplinary $3 million National Science Foundation grant to advance inclusion in STEM by emphasizing faculty impact on student success.
“As a Black woman in postsecondary education who understands the critical importance of combating systems of inequity in STEM and the ways in which each of us play a role in addressing disparate outcomes in STEM degree completion, I am excited to continue to contribute to the work of NAMEPA to advance inclusion in this new capacity,” Harris said. “I previously served as a NAMEPA board member and Region E chair. NAMEPA has an incredible leadership team and active membership across the nation who are all keenly focused on making STEM more equitable and inclusive.”
NAMEPA is a nationwide network of university administrators, faculty, deans, pre-college educators and industry professionals who are committed to the implementation of programs and policies to broaden participation in STEM by cultivating diversity, access, equity and inclusion in engineering specifically and, more broadly, STEM. The association’s efforts to attract, retain and graduate engineers from historically underrepresented minority populations have helped to quadruple the number of underrepresented engineers in a field that has traditionally lacked access, diversity, equity and inclusion.