Engineering Libraries and Student Organizations: Working Together to Enhance Outreach to Underrepresented Groups

Recruiting and retaining a diverse student population is extremely important for any post-secondary STEM program. Students from traditionally underrepresented groups come from a wide array of backgrounds. They can bring new ideas and new perspectives to existing knowledge. Libraries can play an important role in helping engineering programs welcome these future engineers to the university as well as provide an environment that nurtures their growth as researchers and practitioners. This paper documents the initial outreach done by a new Engineering Librarian, with the full assistance of library staff and student employees, designed to let underrepresented students know of our resources and services and to enlist their help in making those services better. Although the COVID-19 pandemic created challenges during the first year of this new outreach program, the library was able to successfully contact many student organizations who were willing to work with it. These contacts led to two successful exhibits showcasing the achievements of recent minority engineering graduates from the university. The first was a collaboration between the Engineering Library and the student chapter of the National Society for Black Engineers while the second was a joint exhibit created with the help of the student chapter of the Society for Women in Engineering. These first steps have convinced the Engineering Library that such collaborative work can be effective and will be the foundation for further outreach events, both virtual and, hopefully one day soon, in person.