The National Society of Black Engineers rolls its much-expanded presence into town tomorrow, bringing with it a wide-ranging examination of black Americans and their role in an ever-expanding technological world.

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Dozens of nationally known speakers and more than 10,000 people are expected for five days of community events, workshops and awards sessions all tied to the conference's theme: Building the FIRE, or the Foundation to Impact, Revitalize and Empower.

Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, Mayor Bob O'Connor and schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt are expected to join group officials and others to kick off the conference tomorrow.

The society, spread over six geographic regions, has 300 chapters and has been in existence since 1975. But as a group it has catered mostly to college students and stayed mostly under the radar. A conference in Pittsburgh in the mid-1990s was a significantly smaller affair that went largely unnoticed.

Today, Carl B. Mack, a former president of the Seattle NAACP and a mechanical engineer, is determined to bring what he called "America's best-kept secret" out of the dark.

Mr. Mack is not shy about addressing what he calls a dearth of black professionals in the engineering fields and is poised to involve the organization in changing that.

Nationally, blacks make up about 36,000, or 2.6 percent, of the 1.4 million working engineers in the United States -- even though blacks represent roughly 12 percent of the overall population.

Increasing those figures, said Mr. Mack, is tantamount to self-preservation. If the numbers don't get higher, he said, the NSBE would struggle to exist.

To address the level of minorities in engineering, Mr. Mack is positioning the NSBE to be mission-oriented by telling its members to volunteer in schools and be a resource that is lacking in the home.

"If there is a crisis in the country," he said, "it needs a solution and NSBE can be the solution."

To turn the tide, the society has launched a $25,000 online tutoring program for kindergarten through high school students and is developing a summer program to immerse third- and fifth-graders in math and science.

Before the conference wraps up on Sunday, delegates will debate the role of women in technology, host a math competition, launch rockets from Point State Park and examine roles for black engineers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the rebuilding of New Orleans.

A few high-profile names in business and engineering will weigh in during the conference, including: Randal Pinkett, the first African American to win on Donald Trump's TV show "Apprentice"; Dr. Gwendolyn Boyd of Johns Hopkins University, the first black woman to earn a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Yale University; Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University; and National Public Radio journalist Ed Gordon, who will host the black-tie Golden Torch Awards on Thursday night.

A large part of the conference is the national jobs exhibition, the graduate student fair, designed to interest students in advanced technical degrees, and free community activities that reach out to high school students of color to interest them in engineering careers.

The National Society of Black Engineers, based in Alexandria, Va., is expecting that 10,000 attendees will be family and pre-college students, 7,000 will be undergraduate or graduate students, 1,000 will be technical professionals from across the country and 300 corporate members.

Conference-goers are expected to fill the city's 3,500 Downtown hotel rooms and will spill out into 7,000 rooms in other nearby lodgings. The four-day conference, the largest convention this year, is expected to drop $37 million into the city's coffers. The conference runs through Sunday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. Most activities start at 9 a.m.

NSBE is one of the largest student-managed organizations in the world. Students do all the planning, budgeting and administration for the conference.

For entertainment, there are comedy and gospel shows.

A free Pre-College Community Day is scheduled for Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Students must be accompanied by an adult to attend workshops on mentoring, health and engineering. There will be a math-athon competition and a model rocket launch. Lunch is free for the first 200 and dress is casual.

Paid registration, from $75 to $400, is required for most events.

For more information, or to register, visit www.nsbe.org and click on the Pittsburgh '06 link.

The conference is supported by local corporations, including Alcoa, PPG Industries, U.S. Steel, and by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.