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Chief of Engineers Lt. Gen. Carl Strock believes that the Corps “could increase our focus on interesting young Hispanics in science and technology,” he said in an interview during the 17th annual Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation (HENAAC) convention Oct. 5 at the Anaheim, Calif., Convention Center.
“We can expand on that,” said Strock, citing the Los Angeles District’s sponsorship last year of the Viva Technology program at Roosevelt High School which, he said, the District “executed and embraced,” the first District in the nation to do so. Using student “engineering” teams coached by Hispanic engineering students, Viva Technology fosters teamwork and collaboration in completing engineering projects under competitive conditions.
This year’s Viva program is in New York, next year’s in Jacksonville, and Strock suggested that the Corps “should really do more of a network approach to these things. We can take advantage of those kinds of structured programs in a better way.”
At the HENAAC event, Strock and Ray Mellado, chairman and CEO of HENAAC, reaffirmed a partnering agreement committing their organizations to “a mutual vision and a coordinated effort to embrace opportunities in the fields of engineering, science, mathematics and technology.”
The agreement declares that both leaders “recognize that a workforce comprised of diverse, high-performing individuals, with valuable talents and strengths, is critical to providing excellent services to all our customers, especially Soldiers and their families.”
“We should expand existing outreach,” Strock said in the interview. “We should make a special effort during Engineer Week, for example. We can do a better job of reaching Hispanic people.”
The main way to do so, he added, is “command emphasis and visibility. We can improve on that. From the command level there has to better understanding of demographics and increasing diversity. Each of us needs to know the various population groups within our command.”
If Corps leaders don’t understand such facts, he said, the solution is “to increase our offensive strategy and awareness to show that our workforce is representative of the American population.”
An afternoon workshop Strock was attending was based “on the philosophy that there is a huge demand for technologically capable people and the supply is limited.” Noting that the Hispanic community is the fastest growing community in the U.S., he said the Corps must “gain access to this community. If we don’t target them, we will miss out on an opportunity.”
Corps strategy and policy for this mission comes from its role as “a public agency whose responsibility is to act in the public interest.” But, he also said, “From self-interest, we will only be as successful as we are in balancing this supply and demand. It’s about both public interest and self-interest.”
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