Georgia Tech is the top producer of African-American engineers at the master's degree level, according to Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine's annual college rankings report.

During the 2004-2005 academic year, Georgia Tech was ranked No. 1 in master's degrees in engineering granted to African-American students, with 29 degrees, up from 26 last year, when Tech also held the top spot.

Other top five degree producers at the master's level include North Carolina A&T State University and the University of Michigan, each with 26 degrees, and Old Dominion University and Southern Methodist University, each with 20 degrees.

"These rankings illustrate Tech's commitment to graduating top minority students in engineering," said President Wayne Clough. "We are proud of Georgia Tech's national leadership role in this area and even more proud of the success of our minority graduates."

Tech was ranked No. 2 in bachelor's degrees awarded to African-American engineering students with 117 degrees. North Carolina A&T University, a historically black university, held the top spot this year.

Tech shared the No. 3 slot for doctoral degrees with Vanderbilt University, George Mason University and the University of Florida. Each school granted four doctoral degrees to African-American engineering students during the 2004-2005 academic year. The No. 1 spot was held by the University of Maryland, followed by the University of Michigan.

Considered by Georgia Tech to be an important tool to measure the success of campus diversity initiatives, the Diverse rankings underscore Tech's efforts to create a diverse campus through strong recruitment and retention practices.

One of Tech's most successful minority recruitment projects is FOCUS, an annual event designed to attract the country's finest minority undergraduates to its graduate programs. Each year, African-American students from more than 80 colleges and universities across the nation attend the three-day series of lectures, tours, panel discussions and social events. The event, which is held annually during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, is now in its 16th year.

In addition, Georgia Tech has a solid relationship with the historically-black institutions in the Atlanta area that make up the Atlanta University Center, Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Morris Brown College, Spelman College, Morehouse School of Medicine and the Interdenominational Theological Center.

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, a publication that covers minorities in American higher education, used statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Education to compile the rankings edition. The special report identifies the top 100 minority degree producers among institutions of higher education and is the only national report of U.S. colleges and universities awarding degrees to African-American, Latino, Asian-American and Native-American students.

The report was released as a two-part series spotlighting undergraduate and graduate statistics. Graduate and professional degree statistics appear in the July 13 edition of Diverse. Undergraduate statistics were released in the magazine's June 1 edition.