ECCO: Accepted students welcomed by Engineers of Color Creating Opportunities program team

University News - Diversity







Annual retreat highlights RIT and engineering college’s academic, cultural and social support opportunities for incoming students





April 11, 2017 by Michelle Cometa Follow Michelle Cometa on TwitterFollow RITNEWS on TwitterHaley Terhaar, from Hershey, Pa., and one of the accepted students participating in the ECCO retreat on April 7, worked with future classmates in the Toyota Production Lab in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering.

More than 75 accepted students and family members participated in the second ECCO Retreat taking place in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering. Organized by the ECCO Center team—Engineers of Color Creating Opportunities—the full-day retreat included presentations by current engineering students, information about college and campus academic and social resources, and activities to give the accepted students an idea of what they can expect as they enroll in the engineering college this fall.

The ECCO Center provides diversity programming focused on increasing the number of under-represented AALANA—African American, Latino American and Native American—student engineers in the engineering college. Over the course of the day, accepted students toured the college and met current students and faculty in several of the labs to:

Learn about integrated circuit design and development taking place in the Semiconductor & Microsystems Fabrication Lab, RIT’s clean room;

Understand different machining tools and sophisticated equipment in the Mechanical Engineering Machine Shop;

Produce 3D-printed electronic tigers in the AMPrint Center; and

Learn about the industrial and systems engineering process in the Toyota Production Systems Lab

Haley Terhaar was one of 10 students on the production line building skateboards in the Toyota lab, and her choice of RIT and engineering came after a day last spring traveling with friends on college visits. RIT was the final stop, but it was an unexpected surprise at the end of a long day, she said.

“I loved it,” said Terhaar between duties on the line. The teen from ...

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