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Keeping Underrepresented Minorities in Science
How can colleges and universities attract and retain more underrepresented minority students who want to pursue degrees in the sciences?
A symposia series supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is showcasing successful diversity programs and encouraging institutions that are committed to fostering diversity to replicate or adapt good programs to meet their goals.
Although underrepresented minority (URM) students —defined by the symposia as African American, Latino, and Native American students—represent 23 percent of the undergraduate community, by graduation they earn just 13 percent of all science and engineering bachelor’s degrees. In graduate school, URM students earn less than 8 percent of all doctorates awarded in physical sciences, life sciences, engineering, and mathematics.
“We are losing them in our own house,” said Michael Summers, a chemist and HHMI investigator at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). “Large numbers of underrepresented minority students have talent and interest in becoming science, technology, engineering, and math majors, but very few are retained.”
BUILDING ON THE SUCCESS OF OTHERS
To find ways to encourage more URM students to stay in science, HHMI launched a Symposia on Diversity in the Sciences series. The series was inspired by discussions held at the annual meeting of HHMI Undergraduate Program Directors and HHMI Professors in October 2004.
HHMI Program Directors Wendy Raymond, associate professor of biology at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Robert Lue, director of life sciences education and HHMI undergraduate program director at Harvard, are key organizers for the series. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, Raymond began to use strategies that colleagues at other campuses had successfully employed to attract and retain URM students. She applied their philosophies to her own teaching—by viewing three struggling students of color in her introductory freshman course with fresh eyes, for example. “The slightest gesture one makes, just one sentence of encouragement, can change a person’s life,” Raymond said.
Convinced that the formula for success had already been invented—but now had to be shared and molded to fit campuses of different shapes and sizes—Raymond, Lue, and a group of 16 collaborators received an HHMI minigrant to take their diversity success stories and challenges to three locations: Harvard University; the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM); and the University of Washington (UW). Additional funding for the series comes from the host universities and the National Institutes of Health.
At each site, the series highlighted and analyzed programs that have worked well on different campuses, presented speakers from diversity programs around the country, and invited participants to share their own experiences. Each symposium also provided break-out sessions to allow small groups to brainstorm. Finally, at the end of the day, teams from individual universities came together to revise their own campus plans of action, based on what they had learned during the day. The strategies presented for supporting URM students apply equally well to encouraging women students and students from underprivileged backgrounds, Raymond said.
Each symposium attracted a different mix of universities with unique student populations or sizes—factors that can affect how each institution approaches diversity on campus. The Harvard symposium involved universities and liberal arts colleges that have an intense focus on research experiences for most undergraduate science majors. The ULM symposium addressed the challenges of regional campuses—schools that draw most of their students from nearby counties or states. The UW symposium, which took place October 27–28, 2006, addressed diversity issues on large research university campuses with large undergraduate classes.
A final symposium,
“Diversifying Science: From Concept to Practice,” will be held January 27–29, 2008, at HHMI headquarters in Chevy Chase, Maryland. This meeting will bring together participants from the three previous symposia to share strategies and plan the next steps.
STAY TUNED
Each team may eventually submit a set of goals for achieving success at its institution. Symposia organizers hope to create
- a national consortium of institutions dedicated to promoting diversity in the sciences; and
- a website with data on URM science students; a summary of initiatives; and links to private, academic, and federal sites that support diversity efforts in the sciences.
Raymond noted that the meetings have already been successful in reaching new institutions. “If we can capitalize on those new connections, we are on our way to publicizing the ways different institutions can create programs that fit their own campus,” she said.
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