By Emily Schoch | Staff Writer
The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers began an official Baylor chapter in May and is now working to create a community for Hispanic engineers at Baylor.
Veracruz, Mexico sophomore Miguel Ramos Cabrera said he worked alongside El Paso sophomore Marco Flores Melchor to create the Baylor chapter of SHPE. For them, it was a way to find community and get involved on campus while still preparing for their futures.
SHPE Is a national organization that supports Hispanic professional engineers. Located at many college campuses across the United States, its mission is to engage Hispanic engineers in community, networking and service.
Ramos Cabrera, president and founder of the SHPE at Baylor, said he noticed a gap in opportunities and ways to get involved as a Hispanic engineer. Ramos took it into his own hands to foster a community that would bring people of similar backgrounds and interests together.
Ramos Cabrera said that after his first semester at Baylor, he felt a lack of support and community. After that experience, he took it into his own hands and worked with Baylor professors to bring SHPE to campus.
“SHPE is a community that is really based on networking and making our people grow. We offer workshops to teach useful skills,” Ramos Cabrera said. “We always bring people from companies or different universities to try to network, so our members are really connected to the field.”
SHPE not only gets students connected on campus, but in the real world as well, according to Ramos Cabrera. His goal with SHPE is to engage with students while they’re in college as well as out of college.
SHPE is a massive networking hub for Hispanic engineers because it’s represented across the nation, Flores Melchor said. There are people from every chapter that lend helping hands when networking with students across the country.
“SHPE doesn’t only just like to give you the name, they also give you a lot of opportunities,” Flores Melchor said. “So they send you a lot of supplies that you can do workshops with. They give you internships, some scholarships, they connect you with a lot of people. So that’s also something that’s pretty different from other clubs.”
According to Flores Melchor, SHPE is not only geared towards academics — SHPE is also becoming involved in community service this semester.
“We want to make sure that [our community service] is something that’s really affecting something. We want to do stuff that gets our hands dirty and is making a difference,” Flores Melchor said. “If a building is left behind, that’s also something that SHPE left behind.”
Ramos Cabrera said he’s passionate about not only bringing engineers into SHPE but also allowing students from other majors to join, which is unique to Baylor’s chapter. According to Ramos Cabrera, he wants there to be a wide range of skill sets available for everyone to benefit from each others’ talent.
“We have this philosophy that we always want to include people, even though SHPE is really limited to engineering,” Ramos Cabrera said. “You never know if someone has a skill that might be useful to you, and everyone can grow. Knowledge is literally power, and we want to share [it].”
