For two of the past four years, Tech has topped all universities in the country in its production of African-Americans with science and engineering degrees. In fact, Tech has appeared among the top 10 for a decade. In terms of graduate degrees for minorities, no other institution even comes close to matching Georgia Tech's output.

There's a lot of credit to be shared for those accomplishments, but much of it points to the Office of Minority Educational Services, celebrating its 25th anniversary.

"Georgia Tech has proven that you can value diversity and go after very talented minority students as well as majority students without jeopardizing your academic integrity or your high academic standards," said S. Gordon Moore Jr., Mgt 92, managing partner and director of OMED since 1998."It has definitely been a cumulative effort thanks to support from the Georgia Tech president's office, faculty, alumni, key people in enrollment services and admissions as well as programs like OMED."

Founded in 1979 during the administration of Joseph M. Petit, OMED's original mission was to address the particular social and academic needs of minority, primarily black, students. Over the years, its function has reflected changes in Tech's increasingly diverse student population, Moore said.

OMED's change in focus from a remediation model to a strategy-development model, which Moore said occurred in the early 1990s, also brought a change in the office name to OMED: Educational Services.

"We see ourselves as an educational service that all students can take advantage of," Moore said. "All of our programs are open to the campus at large and are often taken advantage of by the entire population of Georgia Tech."

The idea is to introduce new students to Georgia Tech and provide them with the necessary skills and knowledge to succeed during their first academic year, Moore said.

"There's a strong correlation between first-term performance and the five-year retention rate," he said. "The better you start, the more likely it is that you'll graduate from Georgia Tech."

In addition, OMED provides "bridge" programs for transfer students, graduate students and participants in the dual-degree program, in which students from other colleges and universities can also earn an engineering degree at Tech.