Doris Espiritu, Ph.D.
Senior Advisor to Provost and Dean of the Center of Excellence for Engineering and Computer Science
City Colleges of Chicago - Wilbur Wright College
Doris Espiritu, Ph.D., is the Senior Advisor to
the Provost of the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC), Dean of the Center of Excellence for Engineering and Computer Science, and Professor of Chemistry at Wilbur Wright. Doris Espiritu is one of the first National Science Foundation’s research awardees under the Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) Program, a co-PI of NSF CAFECS and the Department of Energy’s Industrial Building Assessment Projects and Wright College PI of SLOAN Foundation Grant, Enduring Pathways which prepares community college students for graduate programs. She founded Engineering at Wright and had grown the Engineering program enrollment by 2200% within five years. Doris founded seven student chapters of national organizations, including the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers (SASE), and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). Doris promotes collaboration between K-12 schools, other community colleges, 4-year institutions, non-profit organizations, and industries. Doris’ current research is to design and implement practices that develop Community of Practice (CoP), Professional Identity, and Self-Efficacy to increase diversity in Engineering and Computer Science and to streamline transfer from community colleges to 4-year institutions. Through her research, she authored the Contextualized Bridge that eliminated up to two years of remedial math and placed students directly into Calculus 1. She also developed the Holistic and Programmatic Approach for Transfer (HPAT) model that transfers 89% within two years as juniors to the 4- year transfer institutions that allows underprepared students to complete engineering degrees in four years.
