The award was presented during New Mexico Tech's commencement ceremonies on Saturday, May 10, at the state-supported research university. Fisher was presented his award for developing programs to improve retention at UTEP's College of Engineering. I helped to develop the Entering Students Program in the College of Engineering, to help students better prepare to go into engineering disciplines. I've been working on the program since 1989, and it was implemented fully in 1998.
Preliminary results are very encouraging.
The Entering Students Program groups 25 students together in all the same classes, a technique called clustering, to create learning communities among these clusters of students. Fisher credits his experiences at New Mexico Tech as an influence on his educational philosophy. The program was interdisciplinary, and I was exposed to all different technical areas. At that time, all graduate students, regardless of major, participated in one graduate seminar. We were one big learning community, and we helped each other.