Professor Julie Trenor discusses scholarship opportunities with Salman Hasan, an incoming engineering academic merit scholar.

The UH Cullen College of Engineering motto is, “Quality Education with a Personal Touch,” and in many cases that philosophy is placed into action even before students decide to enroll at UH.

How is that possible? Meet Julie Trenor, the new director of undergraduate student recruitment and retention. Trenor is identifying and recruiting prospective “high-ability” students that might otherwise miss out on the rich rewards of choosing a UH engineering education. Trenor lives by the college motto, establishing the kind of one-to-one personal connection that has become the hallmark of the undergraduate experience at the Cullen College of Engineering.

But Trenor isn’t just recruiting excellent students; she’s also teaching many of them in their first engineering classes. She taught in the freshman engineering program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. It was there that she discovered her passion for teaching introductory courses to first-year students.

Trenor’s unique combination of skills and experience is a huge advantage, but it is her ability to relate to the students on multiple levels that is her greatest asset.

“I was once in their shoes,” says Trenor, who holds a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering.

Freshman Leyder Cuellar reviews plans for a design project with professor Julie Trenor.

Engineering class sizes are small, and undergraduate classes are actually taught by faculty members, not by graduate students.

“One of the things I stress when I’m talking with prospective students is that when they’re in their engineering classes, they are not going to be taught by teaching assistants and never have contact with the professor. They’re going to be taught by a professor who has a Ph.D. in engineering, a technical expert who runs world-class research programs and likely brings in significant amounts of research grant money to the university.”

Sometimes half the battle is just getting recruits to visit campus.

“Many of these students have lived in Houston or surrounding area their whole lives,” says Trenor. “They’ve never stopped to discover that our campus is full of trees, fountains and sculptures, and that it’s such a nice place. One of my goals is to actually get them on campus to show them the engineering departments and other places on campus, to have them meet current students and professors. When they do that, the prospective students realize that we’re friendly, we’re personable and we do really want them to come here. They also see that we have a commitment to undergraduate teaching. If they come to the Cullen College of Engineering, they’re not going to be treated like a number.”

UH has another distinct advantage, which Trenor is not shy about advertising. “Students who have a combined score of 1200 on the math and verbal sections of the SAT and are in the top 15 percent of their class are getting $6,000 a year in scholarship money as an engineering major here—every year for four years. At UH, that award basically covers their tuition and fees. At many other institutions, the same students get nothing in the way of merit-based scholarship money.”

Because Trenor is typically working with these top students, another thing that she promotes is the close relationship that the Cullen College of Engineering has with The Honors College.

“While our students will almost always be in small classes, and will be taught by great professors for their engineering coursework, if a student is a member of The Honors College, then they have an intimate academic learning community for those non-engineering introductory classes as well. Students generally take their core classes with the same group of people.”

To make the picture even more appealing, The Honors College has a beautiful new facility in the new wing of the M.D. Anderson Library. Plus, the professors associated with The Honors College are typically some of the top teaching professors at UH, and they concentrate on giving students a broad education.

In addition to visiting individually with prospective students, Trenor organizes and hosts several events to attract groups of prospective students to campus, which include HonorE Day for high school seniors and their parents, and Pre- Engineering Day for students in local pre-engineering programs held during National Engineers Week.

Trenor serves as director of the college’s Research Experience for Undergraduates, a nationally funded program that brings top-quality high school students from around the country to the college to learn first-hand how advanced engineering research is conducted. She also serves as director of the Research Experience for Teachers, another nationally funded program that brings area high school teachers to campus to work with faculty on engineering research projects so they can take their new knowledge and enthusiasm for engineering back into their classrooms. When you put all these pieces together, it makes for a powerful combination of recruiting tools.

“I think what the scholarship money does, in my short experience here,” says Trenor, “is that it gets some of these top students to look at the University of Houston. The award money gets their attention, and once we get them to campus, they meet our students and faculty, they see our facilities, they hear about our classes and all the other things that make them realize: This university that’s been in my backyard my whole life is really a jewel that I never knew about.”