AGEP PROJECT PROFILE INFORMATION:

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill AGEP

PI: Henry T. Frierson University of NC-Chapel Hill 121 Peabody Hall, CB#3500 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3500 frierson@email.unc.edu ht_frierson@unc.edu (919) 962-7507 (919) 962-1533	Program Coordinator / Director: Henry T. Frierson University of NC-Chapel Hill 121 Peabody Hall, CB#3500 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3500 frierson@email.unc.edu ht_frierson@unc.edu (919) 962-7507 (919) 962-1533
Preferred day-to-day contact person: Henry T. Frierson

Disciplines / departments:

• Biology,
• Chemistry,
• Computer Sciences,
• Environmental Sciences,
• Engineering,
• Geological Sciences,
• Information Sciences,
• Mathematics,
• Marine Sciences,
• Materials Sciences
• Physics
• Astronomy

Website address: ibiblio.org/res

Impact nugget:

The alliance that occurred at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) was the cooperation of 10 STEM graduate programs to increase the number of underrepresented graduate students in their respective programs and to provide extensive research opportunities for underrepresented minority undergraduate students. Notably, most of these academic programs represented disciplines where the presence of underrepresented minority students is, for all intent, minuscule. Within that context, however, 52 students from other colleges and universities have participated in summer research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the10 STEM areas affiliated with the UNC-CH AGEP project. Further, 28 UNC-CH undergraduate students have participated in STEM research during the academic year within those departments and under the aegis of AGEP. The majority of the students have presented their research at national research conferences. The 10 participating departments have now become accustomed to having underrepresented minority students in the labs of their faculty members. As mentioned, before AGEP, this was a relatively rare occurrence in many of the participating disciplines. One can only look at the national figures to see that this situation was endemic across the nation. Moreover, these experiences with undergraduate students have had an apparent influence in the increase of underrepresented minority graduate students in those 10 departments. This is indicated by the numbers of underrepresented minority students enrolling in the PhD programs of those disciplines, the AGEP project alone has supported 36 underrepresented minority PhD students. Of critical note, most of those disciplines had very few, some had none, enrolled underrepresented minority students until the advent of AGEP at UNC-Chapel Hill. Importantly, the cultures of those departments have changed so that if there was any skepticism regarding underrepresented minority students, it has been diminished considerably, for the expectation is now that those students will succeed in their PhD programs. Further and quite significantly, those departments are actively engaged in encouraging minority students to matriculate into their graduate programs.