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HARVARD SYMPOSIUM:
LA-STEM Research Scholars and HHMI Undergraduate Mentors:
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (LSU), offers two programs for underrepresented minority (URM) students seeking science degrees—one for high achievers and one for those who are struggling. Isiah Warner, LSU vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and an HHMI professor, explained that students can move between the two programs depending on their academic performance, and that the two programs interact well.
The HHMI undergraduate mentor program accepts students in a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) major with a GPA between 2.5 and 3.0. The students receive a stipend, attend regular meetings with academic advisors, and take a course on learning strategies and time management. They are encouraged to seek out research opportunities and to mentor high school students.
If students improve their GPA to 3.5 or higher, they can move into the sister program, Louisiana (LA)-STEM research scholars. These students must be dedicated to pursuing a Ph.D. in a STEM field. The program provides a partial scholarship and includes a summer bridge program. Students must be actively engaged in research by the fall semester of their sophomore year, spend summers doing research, and attend a series of courses on mentoring, education, and research.
Although both programs began only in 2004, preliminary data from the LA-STEM students show the format’s promise. Seventy-five percent of students plan to pursue a STEM Ph.D., and 84 percent of these students are retained in their STEM majors, compared with only 50 percent of all LSU STEM majors.
Warner noted that LSU has several advantages that help these programs succeed. For example, LSU confers the most URM chemistry Ph.D. degrees in the United States. The university’s graduate students provide powerful role models for LSU’s URM undergraduates in STEM majors. “We have a critical mass, partly because of our proximity to historically black colleges and universities in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. When you have a critical mass, recruiting becomes self-sustaining, because word gets out that someone had a good experience here,” said Warner.
Warner added that the family atmosphere provided by the LA-STEM community is important at a research university with 26,000 undergraduates. He also emphasized the importance of showing URM students the connections between their course work and real-world research.
Warner’s own leadership has been the key to the program’s success. He grew up in Bunkie, a small town in rural Louisiana. He admitted that, when a teacher once told him he should get a Ph.D., he asked, “What’s a Ph.D.?” He is drawn to helping students who remind him of his own beginnings—those reared in rural or inner-city homes who need mentors to show them the possibilities of a career in scientific research.
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