President’s Address

Greetings!

Welcome to the University of Missouri’s (Mizzou) chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). My name is Kyarra Gorham and I have the honor of serving as Mizzou NSBE’s chapter president.

I am thrilled to work with many key players such as our chapter executive board, Region V NSBE, Mizzou’s College of Engineering, and many more this year in increasing our efforts to follow NSBE’s mission and national directive of graduating 10,000 black engineers annually by 2025.

In order to reach this goal, we need to make sure we raise awareness of who we are and what we stand for. As a chapter, we have and hold a number of events, workshops, and programs that run in line with our mission as a society along with ensuring we are benefiting our membership. 

To make sure we are excelling academically we teach programs such as the Guaranteed 4.0, host various tutoring sessions, study halls, GPA checkups, and more. To help our members succeed professionally, we often partner with our College of Engineering to hold resume reviews, elevator pitches, and mock interview workshops as well as bring in companies for the opportunities of internships, co-ops, and/or full-time positions. Furthermore, we take our members to the annual Fall Regional Conference and National Convention for the opportunity to learn more about society, go to workshops that align with our mission, and network during conferences along with the career fairs held at conferences. And to ensure we are positively impacting the community, we do weekly tutoring to the youth at St. Luke United Methodist Church, our annual Walk for Education, and other acts of service in between such as volunteering at the local food bank and community clean-up in the Columbia area.   

As chapter president, my personal directives ACT. ACT stands for Actions that Change Things. I believe that through effective communication, leadership development, outreach, and personal development we  all can continue to grow.  I want to improve  the board and membership communication to help harbor the NSBE family spirit. I plan to host workshops and bring in new companies the memberships have not seen before to help promote new opportunities and leadership development. I want NSBE to be a safe place for all of membership despite age, gender and sexuality everyone should feel welcomed and accepted.  My past year as membership chair I was able to listen to my members to hear feedback and see room for improvement. Working to bridge the communication gap between the board and general body members. I plan to encourage and prompt original thinking when it comes to hosting events to keep our membership engaged and excited. 

-President, Kyarra Gorham