The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) was founded in 1974 by a group of engineers in Los Angeles, California. Their desires were to create a national organization of professional engineers to serve as role models in the Latino community, but they created much more than that.

SHPE's mission is to "promote the development of Hispanics in engineering, science and other technical professions to achieve educational excellence, economic opportunity and social equity." Networking was the key basis for the newly founded organization, and immediately 2 student chapters were created. From these two student chapters SHPE has grown to be the largest and fastest growing Latino technical organization with more than 109 student chapters and 31 professional chapters in over 110 cities across the nation and even has a chapter overseas. These chapters are divided into 7 regions including the island of Puerto Rico in the northeast region of Region IV.

In 1982, the SHPE student chapter at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) was founded by a small group of Latinos. Our chapter, SHPE-Rensselaer, became an officially recognized chapter in 1983 and has grown to have up to 200 members this past year. Upholding our goals and aspirations, we have been a very active chapter from the start. Every fall we host prospective minority students during their stay for the Rensselaer Minority Student Weekend. During this weekend we hold Academic Olympiad; a competition to win a SHPE book scholarship to RPI. In the spring we hold our annual Outreach Weekend during which minority students stay on campus and participate in interactive workshops based on the engineering sciences and how to get into college successfully. The students get an inside look at our school and even have the opportunity to build bridges. For our tremendous dedication and determination we received the Region IV Chapter of the Year Award.

Our chapter has also been able to provide leadership in hosting conferences among chapters. SHPE-Rensselaer served as a host school for the first Region IV Upstate NY and Massachusetts sub regional meeting in 1993. On a Regional level, SHPE-Rensselaer was the first SHPE chapter to organize a Region IV Student Leadership Conference (RSLC). Held on Rensselaer's campus in the spring of 1989,it served as a model for the eight RSLCs that followed. SHPE-Rensselaer was honored again by its selection as a host school for the Region IV Student Leadership Conference in 1995, giving it the distinction of being the only school to host the 34 (at the time) student chapters within Region IV, twice!

SHPE-Rensselaer has accomplished many goals, the career fair being one of which we are most proud. We invite you to learn more about our organization and thank you for supporting this event.

For more information please visit http://shpe.rpi.edu