MENTOR

Dr. Felicia Benton-Johnson

Vice President for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence, Clemson University

Felicia Benton-Johnson, Ed.D. has been an educator for more than twenty years. Currently, she is the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence at Clemson University. Dr. Benton-Johnson is responsible for working across campuses and sites with community and grant partners to foster an inclusive and supportive environment. The role serves on campus commissions, committees and boards established to address various dimensions of diversity and inclusion.
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Before her role at Clemson, Dr. Benton-Johnson worked at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she served as Assistant Dean and Director of the College of Engineering’s Center for Engineering, Education and Diversity (CEED). She has extensive experience in research centered upon expanding inclusive excellence in STEM education and serves on a number of national boards.
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Dr. Benton-Johnson has mentored hundreds of students and because of these efforts, she received the Georgia Tech ‘Mentor of the Year’ award from the Vice President for Institute Diversity for inspiring and encouraging diverse populations in higher education. In addition, her center received the 2017 Institute Unit Diversity Champion’s Award, which is given to units that actively demonstrate and positively promote the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Georgia Tech campus community.
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She is a member of the Executive Leadership Team of the Center for Cell Manufacturing, a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center, where she co-directs diversity and inclusion, as well as the Executive Board of Directors for the National GEM Consortium where she serves as Vice Chair.
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Dr. Benton-Johnson received her B.S. and M.Ed. degrees in Biology and Curriculum and Instruction from Tennessee State University in 1993 and 1996 respectively; as well as her Ed.D. in Higher Education Leadership with an emphasis on Diversity Initiatives from the University of Sarasota, Florida in 2005. Dr. Benton-Johnson, a native of Memphis, Tennessee, is married to Micheal Johnson. They have two daughters, Blake and Bailey.

Diversity Programs

Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering consistently ranks in the Top 10 engineering schools in the country, both in size and program quality. Currently, the College ranks 4th in undergraduate programs according to US News and World Report (as of the Fall of 2020). Georgia Tech’s student population is more than 25,000, of which more than 60% are in the College of Engineering.
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With an annual budget of over a million dollars, Dr. Benton-Johnson oversees numerous programs that are geared towards supporting a cadre of diverse students in STEM. The initiatives housed in CEED are as follows:

  • The Summer Engineering Institute (SEI) a 3-week residential program for rising 11th and 12th grade underrepresented minority students from across the nation; Engineering Information Sessions given to prospective students.
  • Two transfer programs, the Dual Degree Engineering Program and the Regents Engineering Pathways Program
  • An undergraduate peer mentoring program that provides financial support, professional development and social/academic advisement to students known as the Peer to Peer mentoring program (P2P)
  • A scholarship program, Retaining Inspirational Students in Engineering and Technology (RISE)
  • The Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE), a 10-week undergraduate research experience for junior and senior underrepresented minority undergraduate students from across the nation.

In addition, she is responsible for four institutional programs:

  • The National Science Foundation-funded Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP)
  • The Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate Research University Alliance (AGEP-RUA)
  • The National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME)
  • The GEM Fellowship