Leaving Baltimore

Once every year during a period when the pace of activities in Baltimore is fairly slow, the downtown area of this city for the past 23 years has come alive with young people from across the country who show up to dazzle and become dazzled by giants of the corporate, military and education sectors. The magnetic convergence of the hordes of high school and college students on downtown Baltimore is the result of the Black Engineer of the Year Award Conference (BEYA) which exposes these aspiring scientists, engineers, mathematicians and educators to the latest opportunities, developments and leaders which President Obama has called critical to the future of this country and the world.

There isn’t a conference in this country which compares with BEYA in size, quality or impact on African-American students. Between the workshops, seminars, lunch and dinner events and the enormous job fair, thousands of Black students have each year been presented with the invaluable ingredients that have ignited possibly tens of thousands to pursue meaningful careers in the areas of science, engineering, mathematics and technology. These are areas which are embarrassingly under-populated by African Americans due to lack of exposure and other barriers that have historically impeded the progress of our kids.

In addition to the impact of BEYA on students in the Baltimore region and across the country, the economic contribution of the three-day BEYA event to Baltimore is touted as being $8 million to $9 million. Furthermore, the critical mass of the heads of the leading aerospace corporate giants, combined with the enormous numbers of military generals, admirals and other military brass all being exposed to downtown Baltimore at one time, is a benefit the city cannot ignore.

It has been reported that Career Communications Group, the organizers of BEYA, are planning to move the conference to another jurisdiction due to the lack of responsiveness of Mayor Sheila Dixon and her administration. The possibility of BEYA leaving Baltimore is deeply disturbing.

It is not simply the exposure (economic and otherwise) Baltimore will stand to lose, and the impact on the local high school and college students that concerns us. We understand that several BEYA major corporate sponsors use the event as an opportunity to simultaneously bring into Baltimore their own organized African-American groups which, in turn, have their own meetings at the same time as the BEYA conference. Apparently, there were 10 sponsors who took advantage of the BEYA event this year to have their own simultaneous separate corporate meetings in Baltimore. Thus, additional indirect benefits Baltimore derives from the BEYA event are probably prodigious.

Finally, enough cannot be said about the military leadership which has partnered with BEYA in support of attracting young African-American talent into the fields badly needed by the arm services of this country. The service chief of each and every branch of the armed forces, including a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has shown up and participated in the BEYA conference.

Therefore, given the importance of BEYA and the current environment (economic and otherwise) which Baltimore currently finds itself, we cannot see how Baltimore can tolerate the possibility of losing BEYA to another jurisdiction. We strongly encourage Mayor Dixon to pull out all stops to prevent the BEYA departure from becoming a reality by quickly establishing a meaningful dialog with executives of Career Communications Group to retain the presence of this valuable event in Baltimore.