Susan J.S. Lasser

Clemson University | Clemson, SC | 1996

Susan J.S. Lasser Portrait Photo

The official biography below was current at the time of the award. Awardees may choose to provide their latest biographical information on their profile page.

Lasser is Director of Programs for Educational Enrichment and Retention (PEER) at Clemson. Lasser's accomplishments include: o Development and implementation of PEER, a mentoring-based program, that has demonstrated success by taking Clemson from an unacceptably low minority graduation rate to 13th in the Nation (fifth among majority schools) in numbers of African-American engineering graduates; Direct training of 88 minority engineering upper-class students as mentors who then mentor entering minority engineer majors -- PEER's success is documented by the freshman-to-sophomore retention rate, which exceeds 80% annually; Students success in pursuit of advanced degrees in engineering - - of the 67 African-American PEER mentors who have already graduated from Clemson, 25 (nearly 38 percent), are currently in or have completed some postbaccalaureate degree), while of the 21 current undergraduate mentors, eight (nearly one-third), plan to attend graduate school; Publications on mentoring and diversity.