SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — MentorNet today announced it is addressing the issue of America's need for science and engineering graduates by opening its award-winning mentoring program to all qualified students, especially women and minorities, nationwide. MentorNet is striving to supply 30,000 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates to America's workforce annually by offering the program at no cost to any student in these fields with an edu email address. Until today, only students on partner campuses that paid an annual fee could access the program.

"The U.S. ranks 27th in the world in graduating new engineers and scientists. It needs an additional half a million grads in the next decade to catch up to a global economy driven by discovery and invention," said David Porush, MentorNet CEO. "Mentoring is incredibly effective at inspiring students to persist and enter the workforce. We are determined to fill a critical national need by opening our program to any and all qualified college students."

Since MentorNet's founding in 1998, it has:

• Matched 30,000 mentors with proteges
• Reported that 95 percent of its proteges graduated, compared to a national average of 59 percent total graduation rate across all areas of study
• Partnered with 300 colleges, universities, corporations, government labs, agencies and professional societies
• Created a pipeline of diverse talent, as a majority of its proteges considered, applied for or accepted a job at their mentor's place of employment

Silicon Valley-based MentorNet provides access to, and is sponsored by, some of the world's largest engineering and scientific corporations including AT&T, Agilent, 3M, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Intel, National Semiconductor, SanDisk, Rockwell Collins, DuPont, Naval Research Laboratory, and Tyco.

Students create their profile and choose specific professional interests on MentorNet's website. The program matches them with one of thousands of engineers and scientists in the field who volunteer each year and then guides the mentoring relationship for several months to help students make wise career choices, overcome hurdles and prepare them for the professional realities they will face after graduating.

For more information about how your organization can partner with MentorNet, click here. For more information about how your university can offer its students mentoring opportunities, click here.

About MentorNet ?

MentorNet is a 501(C)(3) non-profit educational organization. Its mission is to help engineering and science students at the university level, focusing on women and underrepresented minorities. By matching them with mentors and guiding their one-on-one relationships over the Web, MentorNet enables these students to achieve their career goals and diversify the engineering and science workforce. MentorNet is supported by fees from campus, corporate, government laboratory and organization partners and by grants from public and private foundations. To learn more about MentorNet, visit http://www.MentorNet.net.

SOURCE MentorNet