INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT Education and Workforce
During the Spring 2015 semester, students from Paul Quinn
and Duke University partnered
to study the environment, taking
four classes in environmental
justice, examining laws and actions through the lens of race and
income. A seemingly odd pairing,
the eight students from Paul
Quinn and seven from Duke have
learned their schools have more
in common than they thought,
both learning how smelters,
waste incinerators and other less
desirable operations end up in poor
neighborhoods in West Dallas or
rural North Carolina. Students will
share research with their communities and discover ways to get more
involved in environmental issues.
“What urban schools should
be doing is committing themselves, devoting themselves to the
city they serve, creating models
that are easily replicated so we improve the standards of everyone,”
said Sorrell, who is also a graduate
of Duke’s public policy and law
schools. “I believe in the activist
educator model. I think urban
colleges have a responsibility to
engage in their community.”
In turn, the community has
also gotten involved with Paul
Quinn. Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban is working with
Sorrell on designing a course on
entrepreneurship and has provided
counseling on Paul Quinn’s move to
open-source educational materials.
With renewed community
involvement and a revamped gov-
erning board, Paul Quinn has its
fiscal house in order and regained
the accreditation from a national
accrediting agency.
Sorrell prophesizes that the
turn-around is only the beginning.
“I promise you this, I’m just warming up. I haven’t even taken all my
pitch stuff off the shelf yet. We
want to transform our campus into
a master-planned development – a
city within a city. We’ve gained a
national platform. We created it this
way because we wanted to be able
to really push the envelope and see
what’s possible. People really did
think we were crazy – but a good
crazy. But it takes people that think
they are crazy enough to change.”
And who could have imagined
that there would be no pajamas
in the classroom or that a farm
would come from a football field?
Now that’s a happy ending.
SMART LIVES HERE
Where do students from around
the world go to find an engineering
program that provides state-ofthe-art facilities for students to
acquire the knowledge and skills
they’ll need to develop innovative
technology? They’re coming to
America – and more specifically
to The University of Texas at
Arlington’s College of Engineering.
Recently ranked as the fifth most
diverse university in the U.S.,
UTA is home to students from
more than 100 countries.
What difference does it make? Dr.
Pranesh Aswath, associate dean
of the College of Engineering,
explained, “As we live in a global
economy, the opportunity for our
students to interact with people of
all cultures enhances their world
view and competitiveness when
they graduate. In addition, many
of our faculty in the College of Engineering have overseas roots and
continue to develop collaborations
with top universities in Europe,
South America, Asia, Australia and
Africa, further enhancing opportunities for our students to work
with students and faculty from
these countries.”
With more than 6,000 students
and 24,000 alumni, the College
of Engineering provides the
workforce with highly skilled
graduates, and the mixture of
ethnicities, genders, nationalities
and socioeconomic backgrounds
have prepared students for life in a
global workforce. “Engineering is
a discipline without borders,” said
Dr. Aswath. “In 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau,
Texas exported overseas goods
and services worth $289 billion,
which is more than California and
New York combined, and the top
five destinations were Mexico,
Canada, Brazil, China and The
Netherlands. Clearly, providing
an opportunity for our students to
study in an international environment helps them be competitive in
a global environment.”
UTA graduates and researchers have not only started their own
companies and filled leadership
positions in major industries, their
contributions have also played a
major role in patented innovative
processes and applications, as
well as research that continues