Keep Standards High. Many students arrive on campus lacking the skills needed to do well in the sciences, and the problem often is worse for minorities and women. In some cases the schools they attended earlier lacked the resources needed to challenge them. In others, students were told by well-meaning guidance counselors to take easy classes to keep their grade point averages high. The right kind of support can help these students catch up. Xavier's motto, for example, is "standards with sympathy." Rather than weeding out underprepared freshmen and sophomores, faculty members provide extensive support to help them get up to speed. Then, in their junior and senior years, the special support gradually fades, so that the students will be ready to compete with their peers in professional schools and the workplace. Summer internships and other collaborative programs also can expose undergraduates to the settings they will encounter in future years. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, holds summer workshops with several of the state's historically minority universities. The workshops allow minorities to experience life in a laboratory doing research. "It opened my eyes," says Christopher Tubbs, who is now a doctoral student at North Carolina State University working on the biochemistry of sperm maturation. "I had no idea what research is about." After completing the summer program, in which students do a sequence of projects in different areas of biology, Tubbs received several scholarships that enabled him to continue doing research as an undergraduate at North Carolina Central University. Pay Competitive Stipends. Many students cannot afford to work long hours in laboratories for low or nonexistent wages. At UTSA, for example, Martinez estimates that 95 percent or more of the minority students in his program must hold jobs to pay for tuition and expenses. The biology department therefore pays students appropriately for the work they do in the lab—$5,000 a year for 15-hour weeks during the academic year and full time during the summer. Stipends also reinforce the notion that science is important and could lead to a career. At Fort Lewis, for example, stipends distinguish the summer program in biology from other programs and entice students to try something different. "One of the strongest things we compete against," says the college's Preston Somers, "is students' idea that they've gone to school for nine months and the summer belongs to them." Respect Social Differences. Faculty members and students continue to debate whether different groups have different approaches to science. But hard experience has taught many instructors that monolithic approaches to teaching are ineffective. "It's forced us to let go of how we were taught science," says Fort Lewis chemistry professor Jim Mills. "When I went to school we were taught as a group. Here we emphasize individual attention." For Native Americans, cultural sensitivity could mean finding alternatives to dissections for students from tribes with prohibitions against touching the dead. For Hispanic students, it can mean recognizing that today's generation of students is the first in which it is more widely accepted that students may have to leave their communities to establish careers. For African Americans, faculty members may want to take advantage of learning styles based on cultural traditions. Xavier's Deidre Labat, for instance, says many African American students respond well when given opportunities to affirm verbally what they've just been taught, as in the "amen chorus" of their churches. Take a Long-Term View. Above all, say faculty members involved in efforts to help women and minorities, be patient. Easing the underrepresentation of women and minorities in the sciences will take sustained efforts over many years. Individual successes are important, and it is hard to predict when they will occur. Consider Kathy Bancroft, the Fort Lewis senior who had such difficulties as a pre-med student in the 1970s. During the summer of 1995, she traveled to Stanford University on a research fellowship with her advisor, chemistry professor Ted Bartlett. As part of a student research team, she helped synthesize a molecule found in ginseng that contains antiviral properties. The root yields only small quantities of the compound naturally, so pharmaceutical companies would be interested in a synthesized version. Bancroft says that working with natural pharmacological compounds fits well with her Native American heritage. But she says she is especially proud of succeeding at an undertaking that had previously defeated her. "I was surprised at how well prepared I was," she says. "I even stayed an extra week."

Christopher Tubbs (left), now a graduate student at North Carolina State University, was introduced to undergraduate research during a summer program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.   Expanding The Talent Pool Native Americans at Fort Lewis College African Americans at Xavier University of Louisiana Hispanics at the University of Texas at San Antonio Women at Wellesley College Reaching Out to Older Students Two-Year Colleges A Kaleidoscope of Approaches: Part One A Kaleidoscope of Approaches: Part Two A World Of Opportunity Changes in the Classroom The Laboratory Experience Faculty in the Crossfire The Many Paths to Success     The initiatives that work with women and minority students bear striking similarities to the lessons learned from successful biology programs in general.