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The lack of racial diversity in the technology industry has been widely acknowledged, especially since 2014 when many Silicon Valley companies, like Google, Facebook, and Intel, released racial diversity data. Howard University faculty involved in tech entrepreneurship noticed the racial disparity first-hand as entrepreneurs themselves and as participants in entrepreneurship events and conferences. They set out to build an innovation ecosystem at Howard, a historically Black University, in order to address this gap and prepare more traditionally underrepresented engineering professionals for careers in the current and future technology innovation sector. This paper explores the building of an innovation ecosystem at Howard University and addresses how it started, what it entails, outcomes that have been observed thus far, and next steps.

The faculty learning community project at Howard University involved a diverse group of men and women, tenured, tenure-track, and future faculty across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The purpose of the group was to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning by learning about teaching, reflecting on their practice, and demonstrating competence or knowledge of effective teaching. Activities included interdisciplinary seminars, linked courses, teaching experiments, and biweekly meetings, which collectively became a process of learning and reflection that was supported by colleagues with an intention of getting things done. Evaluation of the faculty learning community (FLC) activities suggests that faculty learning communities are an effective mechanism for enhancing teaching and learning in STEM disciplines. (Contains 13 figures.)