AGEP PROJECT PROFILE INFORMATION:

Graduate Alliance for Education in Louisiana (GAELA)

 

PI: Lester A. Lefton, Ph.D.

Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost

200 Gibson Hall, Tulane University

6823 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70118
(504) 865-5261, lefton@tulane.edu

Program Coordinator / Director: Dr. Henry Bart - Project Director, Associate Professor,

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, Tulane University

Email: hank@museum.tulane.edu

 

Program Coordinator / Director: Dr. Calvin Mackie - Project Co-Director, Associate Professor,

Mechanical Engineering Department, Tulane University

Email: Calvin.Mackie@tulane.edu

 

Preferred day-to-day contact person: Ms. Jannie Price

Program Administrator

Graduate Alliance for Education in Louisiana
Administrative Office
Tulane University
632 Boggs Hall
New Orleans, LA 70118
Phone: (504) 314-7690
Fax: (504) 865-6768

Email:  jeprice@tulane.edu

Primary Partners:

Louisiana State University

Southern University Baton Rouge

 

Secondary Partners:

Xavier University of Louisiana

Dillard University

Southern University New Orleans

 

Disciplines / departments:

 

 

Website address:        http://www.gaela.tulane.edu/

 

Impact nugget:

 

The Graduate Alliance for Education in Louisiana (GAELA) is a recent addition to the AGEP family (formed in 2003).  GAELA involves Louisiana’s two Carnegie Research I institutions and four of its five HBCU’s.  The project is building upon existing minority STEM undergraduate programs at GAELA institutions (LSAMP, HBCU-UP, MARC), and implementing new strategies designed to make STEM graduate education at Louisiana’s flagship universities more inclusive.  We held our first recruitment fair in Fall 2003 and are actively participating in other recruitment conferences regionally and nationally to increase the pool of minority graduate student talent at GAELA institutions.  We are closely examining the doctoral training experience of minorities currently in our institutions and taking steps to change the culture to make the process more conducive to minority participation and success.  One example of culture change we are working to emulate broadly is the tremendous success co-PI Isiah Warner has had in the graduate program in Chemistry at Louisiana State University.  The program has awarded doctoral degrees to 23 African Americans over the past three years and currently has an enrollment of 32 African American graduate students.