The National Society for Black Engineers (NSBE) is an international organization with over six hundred chapters. The organization is made to support black students with a primary focus on stem based careers. There are a total of twenty nine chapters in California, including junior chapters. Majority of NSBE’s chapters belong to prestigious, privately funded institutions including UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCI, Stanford University, and SDSU. While each chapter offers roughly the same amount of employment opportunities and benefits for members, there is a clear inequality with funding and accessibility. The lack thereof has kept the more ill resourced chapters in stagnation.
Each individual organization is student led; meaning that each representative group has to sustain themselves academically, and be sufficient leaders to their chapter. To ensure the sustainability of an organization like NSBE, there has to be a generous amount of funding that chapters who aren’t a part of private institutions, don’t have access to. Though managing a club while navigating adulthood is challenging, Three primary representatives of NSBE’s CSUN chapter have not been deferred.
The amount of effort put into NSBE’s by President Tabitha Sulaiman, Vice President Dami Adenugba, and Secretary Chinedu Egbujor, sets their chapter apart. There is an established rapport that is extended to all those even slightly interested in joining NSBE, these NSBE reps seek partnership with various organizations, resources, and advisors to ensure that members will meet primary goals of employment.
“We gather as much information and opportunities as possible and try to deliver them to our members. NSBE is not just an organization that pertains to one major, it can benefit anyone. As long as you’re a black student, you can benefit from NSBE.”- Vice President Dami Adenugba
“It’s a lot of work that goes into these organizations and I guess that shy’s people away, but I don’t view it as work. If we don’t do this, the black students on campus are gonna move with no direction. You came here for a job, we’re gonna help you get a job.” – Tabitha Sulaiman
As described by board members Sulaiman, Adenugba, and Egbujor, NSBE serves as a helping hand to all black students, offering academic support, advisement, community, employment opportunities and internships. It is a refuge for like minded black students, giving them a sense of direction in navigating their post college plans.
When asked about how NSBE has impacted their lives, they described it as a means of academic and social support;
“Beyond professional and career preparation, for me NSBE is a community that has helped me become who I am today. Yes, academics and being prepared for the workforce is important, but so is finding who you are as a person, especially as a black person. NSBE has helped me find other individuals that look like me, and want the same things I do. Being around this community has helped me become more expressive, just being able to connect with different individuals around the African diaspora is what NSBE has done for me.” – Club secretary Chinedu Egbujor
“NSBE to me is a family, it’s here for support where support is not given. A lot of freshmen come in thinking, oh, once I get my degree I’m gonna get my job automatically, but that’s not the case, you actually have to fight for it and grab on to it. So NSBE is a space for black engineering students to find their pathway in their career fields.” – Tabitha Sulaiman
“It’s the safe space every black student needs, especially when you’re the only black student in your class, it’s very isolating.” – Tabitha Sulaiman
President Sulaiman’s love for NSBE turned into advocacy when indifferences of club funding and engagement was brought to her attention.
“I first attended a national convention through the USC chapter, and they have like a hundred plus members, and I was so upset because CSUN doesn’t have this. So sophomore year, I revived it. I put my name down for every position, I didn’t care what position I got, I just wanted to be on the board. I wanted to push for NSBE on CSUN’s campus.” – Tabitha Sulaiman
Sulaiman began her advocacy for NSBE’s CSUN chapter by seeking and obtaining proper funding. One of the ways Sulaiman and her board members obtain funding is through career fairs, they persuade companies and corporations to fund their club on the condition of mutual expansion. The money the board members receive is put towards attending national conventions and regional conferences.
“Due to the vast amount of opportunities gained from these events alone, we try to minimize the cost for other things in order to maximize the number of people we can fund for these conferences. The remainder of funding goes towards chapter events such as general body meetings, professional development events, recruitment events, pre-collegiate intivies and collaborative events.” – Vice President Dami Adenugba
“One of our major highlights is being able to go to regional and national conventions for free, especially for STEM majors. The job market is crazy right now, finding a job or internship is hard especially if you don’t have experience. So being able to have the opportunity to talk to recruiters and professionals is really really important.” – Club secretary Chinedu Egbujor
“We have a list of professionals our members can network with. Your network is your net work, so if you have a vast majority of network you can utilize that to find your next job.” – Club secretary Chinedu Egbujor
Any area of resource or department coordinated by CSUN that doesn’t align with the needs of their student body is accounted for by Sulaiman and her board members. CSUN’s College of Computer Science is one of many among these departments. When asked about the academic quality of CSUN’s CCS, they expressed frustration with subpar student engagement, impacted classes, and inexperienced professors.
“The CCS department could advertise clubs and research projects within the department a lot more, these clubs are something the students could definitely benefit from. A lot of the professors are very inexperienced, there’s only a few good ones.” – Vice President Dami Adenugba
“I wish the CCS department paid more attention to the evaluations we do of the professors at the end of each semester, unfortunately we have to take the same professor again and I still see the same problems. If they paid some form of attention to that, it can be easily fixed.” Club secretary Chinedu Egbujor
To rectify more controllable issues, Sulaiman, Adenugba, and Egbujor have proposed offers of collaboration to keep the CCS department in moderation with their student body. Members are also encouraged to come forth with any need of academic assistance that they can provide.
“At NSBE we take things into our own hands, if we’re not seeing things being replicated within the college of computer science (CCS), we act on it. One of our initiatives actually is to have an advisor from the CCS advisor and all their separate departments come in and share resources with our members.” – Tabitha Sulaiman
With acknowledgement of the representative leadership showcased by CSUN’s NSBE chapter, I want to reiterate that NSBE isn’t a competitory organization. All chapters are unique in their efforts to support their members, and work collectively towards shared opportunities for future all black engineers. However, not every chapter has adequate resources. There is a clear indifference in accessibility with NSBE chapters that don’t attend privately funded or prestigious institutions. Resilience in the face of drawbacks is a nobility that tends to go unnoticed. In
opposition to this comminality, I applaud President Tabitha Sulaiman, Vice President Dami Adenugba, and Secretary Chinedu Egbujor for their distinctive leadership.