TAMPA, Fla. — Deziree Price is a Black female engineering student. She said when it came to selecting a university, she was very meticulous.

“I picked USF (the University of South Florida) based off of financials for the most part and location because Tampa is just an excellent location,” she said.

USF’s impressive engineering program and opportunities didn’t hurt either.

“Where I’m interning right now, they’re opening their experimentation lab. So that will be a lab where USF professors can work, researchers can come in and work, Department of Defense units can come in and work,” she said.

Price said she considered attending an HBCU but wasn’t sure the same opportunities would be there.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, historically Black colleges and universities generally lack accredited engineering departments.

And according to the American Society for Engineering Education, the amount of engineering degrees given out to Black students in 2018 was 4.6% of compared with 11.4% by Hispanic students and 61.5% by white students.

“If the same resources and opportunities were there at HBCUs I’d feel it’s definitely something I would’ve looked into more because what would be stopping me from it? That really was the only thing,” she said.

At USF, she’s been a part of a team prioritizing diversity in the field.

“I was actually a research assistant on a research project called safe teams. A software and algorithm for inclusive teams,” she said. “We were working on inclusivity in engineering departments and it’s not a surprise that Blacks are very underrepresented in engineering.”

She was excited to learn the same place where she’s getting her high-quality education has a new program that prioritizes diversity.

Taylor Johnston is the COO of the Institute of Applied Engineering located at University Mall. “The Institute of Applied Engineering is an offshoot of the College of Engineering at USF. So, we are still part of the University of South Florida,” he said. “But we got created basically on the back of a napkin seven years ago of how can MacDill Air Force Base with SOCOM and CENTCOM, Special Operations Command and Central Command, work with the university instead of sending dollars to the Johns Hopkins or the Georgia Techs of the world.”

Now that they’re up and running, sending devices into space and securing government contracts with help from students, Johnston said they knew they had to do even more. So they joined the Tougaloo College Research and Development Foundation. It’s a network of universities collaborating with 13 different HBCUs — partnering on some of those ground-breaking projects and bringing in more dollars.  

“Knowing how to put in papers, knowing how to do federal contracts quickly is something the HBCUs don’t have that history in doing,” he said. “Universities are ranked on the amount of dollars they bring from academic grants. So that can bring in more dollars for an HBCU that can bring it from an R3 so a research level 3 institute that doesn’t have that research funding, to a level 2 which brings in more funding.”

USF is the first university in Florida and one of just a handful of universities in the nation to join a network that connects research institutions with HBCUs. USF will not only help train and coordinate with faculty and staff on contracts, but also assist HBCU students with securing internships and mentoring opportunities.