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Google Embeds Engineers as Professors

Company to send teachers to Howard, Hampton, Fisk, Morehouse and Spelman.

Google software engineer and Google In Residence Sabrina Williams, right, talks with freshman Alanna Walton during a Google Student Development class on Impostor Syndrome at Howard University. (Photo: AP Photo/Molly Riley)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — In ongoing efforts to diversify Silicon Valley's tech sector, Google is embedding engineers at a handful of Historically Black Colleges and Universities where they teach, mentor and advise on curriculum.

Today, 35 percent of African Americans receiving computer science degrees come from those schools, but they don't make their way to Silicon Valley's top tech firms.

Google is typical — about one percent of its technical staffers are black. To change that, this year Google sent a handful of software engineers to teach at Howard, Hampton, Fisk, Spelman and Morehouse.

They taught introductory courses, but they also trained students on everything from how to send a professional email to how to make it through a software engineering job interview.

This summer, 30 of those students will be Google interns.

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