Boeing and Southern University and A&M College have been awarded NASA’s 2022 Mentor-Protégé Agreement of the Year for their work on the agency’s space launch system (SLS) rocket. Boeing was nominated by the Marshall Space Flight Center for its mentorship of Southern University “while providing tactical business and technical support to the institution.” Louisiana-based Southern University provided alumni engineering skills to Boeing’s SLS program in New Orleans.
“The NASA Mentor Protégé Program was successfully implemented between Boeing and Southern University,” said Southern University Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies Samuel Washington. “It provided a means to enhance the partnering effort by Boeing, in assessment and training, focused on efficient processing of business and contracting using the university’s needs to increase contracting opportunities.”
The Mentor-Protégé Program aims to pair “large companies with eligible small businesses and minority-serving institutions to enhance the protégés’ capabilities enabling them to successfully compete for larger, more complex contracts.” The associated award is granted based on criteria including protégé growth, protégé development, the value of technical and business development supporting NASA’s mission, program management and ability to stay on track with meeting tasks and goals. The Mentor-Protégé Agreement of the Year award is granted annually as part of NASA’s Small Business Industry Awards (SBIA).
Why not base programs on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin?
I saw nothing here mentioning skin color. I saw the phrase “minority-serving” but that can mean a lot of things. Women are a minority group. Jews are a minority group. Homosexuals are a minority group. For that matter, billionaires are a minority group.
Skin color is not the only way a person can be in a minority. It’s just the most popular.
It’s illegal in the USA to hire based on race OR gender. How can a U.S. based company blatantly ignore the Civil Rights Act?
Don’t feed the troll
Speaking truth to politics. The civil rights movement spent several generation fighting preferential hiring; now it crumbles in a few years from socialism justice.
Russian troll
Arthur, I think you may be inventing things to be mad about. Winning an award for mentoring isn’t “hiring” anybody. A large company mentoring a small company isn’t “hiring” anybody.
When the aim of the program is specifically “minority-serving institutions” then the program is, by definition, looking at race, ethnicity & gender in hiring. That’s the illegal part under the civil rights act of 1964.
Not necessarily. The target institutions (small businesses) are likely owned/operated/managed by a person who is in a minority. Not the hired staff.
Illogical: women are not a “minority” in the population and small businesses will statistically be run by non-minority. That means they ARE using racs and gender to hire. That is illegal and anti-Civil Rights.
Your logic is impeccable. Enjoy your outrage.