 Students in the classroom pay very close attention to who is teaching but particularly for minorities they're looking for an example. Starting an academic career in engineering is challenging in so many ways and then there are additional challenges that some underrepresented minority faculty face. We want the Hispanic, the black, another population to understand the challenges that we all face. We need to be able to give the confidence to the next generation how you as a faculty, as a scientist, adapt to solve some of these problems. We come from different backgrounds and it's important that we share our experiences because then that leads to different perspectives, new innovation, creativity. In the College of Engineering we strive to really help everyone from diverse backgrounds be included. Programs like Black Trail Blazers in Engineering, Latinx, basically we're wanting to help increase the number of underrepresented faculty at institutions like Purdue. This workshop has one focus and that focus is to attract new faculty to academia. So we reach out to graduate students and postdocs that are interested in teaching at a university. Some of the benefits of participating in a program like this is not only networking but getting the type of information that you need to help put together a quality faculty application. You're not sure how you transition from being a PhD and how you're succeeding as a faculty which is a big transition. So this type of workshop gives the students that opportunity to bridge that gap. As a PhD student you know a lot about research, you know a lot about writing and reading but you aren't too privy on how to put together an application package, how to write a grant. This is how you teach a class. This is how you hire a student, how we negotiate a salary. There's also sessions to hear from first-year assistant professors, how to make the transition. There's keynote sessions and then there's some social sessions that occur where you can just socialize and interact with some of the other participants. This has been the best workshop I have ever been at or participated on because of how well organized it was, how deep in content, how deep in important things that we needed to know as grad students. The whole thing is beneficial. My personal favorites were hearing the inspirational talks and keynotes by some just renowned speakers. We get program managers from the top U.S. federal government funding agencies, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense. After due we bring in the department heads. I mean we have the department head talking to fellows and that interaction to see them asking them questions is very special. Students were asking questions and answering questions from each other, you know. It was not so much now I'm talking to the professor in civil engineering but it was I'm talking to someone that is one of my peers that maybe could be a colleague in the future. I wasn't planning to apply, my mentor motivated me looking back it was the best decision that I've made. I got to meet folks in the field of science and engineering in general that were representative of our population. We created a very close community. The workshop allowed us to interact between all of us, the students that participated and also with all the invited speakers. You have a network, you have a family, including at Purdue, that you could tap into later. You have all of us behind it. That's unique. We want to prepare engineers of the future so that if they choose to come to Purdue great but this is a need nationwide. The planning of this workshop because it's the first time that the two organizations are coming together there's going to be special events for Latin and African Americans on what are the challenges, what are the needs and what is required if you want to be a faculty at a major institution.