About NSBE
The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) is one of the largest student-governed organizations in the United States, with over 500 chapters and almost 16,000 active members both in the United States and internationally. NSBE, a 1975-founded 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, supports and promotes the engineering and technology aspirations of collegiate and pre-collegiate students, as well as technical professionals. The NSBE Torch represents the organization's unwavering resolve to succeed in this competitive society and make a positive difference in the quality of life for all people. The same light that shines from the NSBE Torch on students and professionals in the United States is also beneficial to NSBE members abroad. The Society's purpose is to reproduce its mission and vision in countries across the world, resulting in a global network of Black Engineers, Scientists, and Technologists. The National Society of Black Engineers has accomplished more for black engineering students than any other organization worldwide.
The 2025 Goal
Only 19 percent of black 4th graders in the U.S. and 13 percent of the nation’s black 8th graders were proficient in math in 2015, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Only 5.5 percent of black 8th graders in the U.S. in 2005 completed calculus five years later, and a mere 1.1 percent of the nation’s black college freshmen enrolled in engineering programs in 2010, according to a recent analysis conducted by the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). And then there’s this distressing fact from the American Society for Engineering Education: the percentage of African Americans among U.S. engineering bachelor’s degree recipients has been declining for more than a decade and was only 3.5 percent in 2014.
But the core mission of NSBE, founded 40 years ago, is to increase the number of black engineers. So the Society has decided to do something about the effect of these disparaging statistics on black youth and on the nation’s need for talent in the critical fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The Society has targeted an ambitious goal: to have the U.S. produce 10,000 African-American bachelor’s degree recipients in engineering annually, by 2025, up from the current number of 3,620.