Percy Pierre Wins AAAS Lifetime Mentor Award
November 17, 2008
Percy Pierre, vice president and professor emeritus, has received the 2008 Lifetime Mentor Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The award honors individuals who demonstrate extraordinary leadership to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in science and engineering fields and careers; and who have mentored and guided significant numbers of students from underrepresented groups to the completion of doctoral studies or who have impacted the climate of a department, college, or institution to significantly increase the diversity of students pursuing and completing doctoral studies.
Throughout his career, Pierre has developed programs for underrepresented groups in science and engineering, and has counseled and helped support more than 30 individual minority students pursuing doctoral degrees.
Pierre is recognized as the first African American to receive a doctoral degree in electrical engineering (The Johns Hopkins University, 1967). While dean of the College of Engineering at Howard University, Pierre started Howard's first doctoral programs in electrical and mechanical engineering—the first such programs at any Historically Black College or University (HBCU). Working with the National Academy of Engineering, he established the organization that eventually became the National Action Council on Minorities in Engineering (NACME).
As program officer of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, he developed the strategy for supporting the development of the overall minority engineering effort, which led to graduate opportunities at the master's level for those students and resulted in the establishment of GEM—the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science, Inc. In 1998, he started the Sloan Engineering Program in the College of Engineering at Michigan State University, a program that supports recruitment and retention of minority doctoral students. Through this program alone, Pierre has mentored 27 doctoral graduates in engineering.
"Many thousands of students have benefited from Dr. Pierre's tireless work," says Satish Udpa, dean of MSU's College of Engineering. "His commitment to providing these types of opportunities to underrepresented groups is unmatched. I know of no one who is more deserving of this award."
Earlier this year, Pierre received the Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, CSC Award from his alma mater—the University of Notre Dame—for his exemplary model of character and his outstanding contributions in the field of public service. Established in 1985, the award is conferred on an alumnus/alumna (living or deceased) for outstanding service in the field of government, patriotism, public service, or local, state, and national politics.
AAAS is the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science. The Lifetime Mentor Award will be presented to Pierre on February 14, 2009, at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.