The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) was an organization founded in Los Angeles, California in 1974. Rodrigo “Rod” Garcia gathered a cohort of Hispanic engineers and “held a meeting in his garage to determine how they could contribute to diversifying the STEM field,” according to SHPE’s story.
SHPE currently has over 13,000 members, 260 sponsors and partners and 286 professional and student chapters. One of those student chapters is now in the University of New Haven campus.
Raymond Feliz, a senior civil engineering major and the university’s SHPE executive assistant, said that when he and others were trying to start up the organization on campus, they only had three people. “We’re getting a lot of members,” said Feliz after witnessing the good turnout for their general meeting held this past Thursday.
Having good turnout for events is something that Carolina Sousa De La Cruz, a senior computer science major and the university’s SHPE president, finds important in order to grow the organization at New Haven.
De La Cruz said that Feliz approached her with the motivation to start SHPE up on campus, and at that time, there was a small number of people part of this initiative, with many who were interested but graduated before it could truly be formed.
“I just want to see it grow and some future plans that we do have [are] getting some more outreach so we can get more members and making sure that we can keep going as a club,” said De La Cruz.
De La Cruz also touched upon why having a campus organization dedicated to fostering Hispanic engineers is important. “There’s so many engineers who are in the Hispanic community and I just want to make sure that we have as many opportunities that we can facilitate,” said De La Cruz.
“Just seeing it grow” is something that De La Cruz looks forward to with the campus organization, as it will bring many opportunities such as internships and other professional growth opportunities, such as the national SHPE’s InternSHPE program.
Aside from outreaching with the national SHPE, De La Cruz also has plans for collaborating with other student organizations and clubs, one of them being the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Outreach to organizations such as SWE should help grow the campus’s SHPE and get their name across campus, according to De La Cruz.
For those who are interested in joining the U. of New Haven’s SHPE organization, they hold general meetings every Thursday at 4 p.m. Their events can be seen on their Charger Connection page.
