NSF PR 98-71 - October 29, 1998
This material is available primarily for archival
purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information
may be out of date; please see current contact information
at media
contacts.
NSF Awards Minority Graduate Education Grants
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is awarding eight
universities nearly $2.5-million each to significantly
increase the number of African American, Hispanic
and Native American students receiving doctoral degrees
in the sciences, mathematics and engineering (SME).
These institutions are the first to participate in
five-year cooperative agreements with NSF in its newly
established Minority Graduate Education (MGE) program.
This first group of MGE institutions to receive awards
includes: University of Puerto Rico; Howard University;
University of Missouri-Columbia; University of Alabama-Birmingham;
Georgia Institute of Technology; University of Michigan;
Rice University; and University of Florida. Howard
University is a historically black university and
the University of Puerto Rico is a Hispanic-serving
institution.
Each institution will receive awards of up to $500,000
per year depending on numbers of students served and
factors related to project design. The awards focus
on changes in institutional, departmental, and organizational
culture, and on practices that will result in significant
increases in recruitment, retention, degree conferral
and career (especially academic) entry.
"Perhaps most important of all, these grants will help
redress the serious lack of role models and mentors
among higher education faculty, which, research has
shown, constitutes a real impediment to producing
minority SME graduates," said Luther S. Williams,
NSF's director of education and human resources. "There
is a strong but often unconscious cultural message
absorbed by the nation's minority youth by virtue
of the too-rare presence of minorities in the SME
workforce. NSF can help correct this unnecessary and
destructive context, with the benefit to be reaped
by the entire country," he explained.
The funded research seeks to explain the factors underlying
success at critical transition points -- from undergraduate
through graduate study -- needed to develop a sustainable
entry into the SME workforce. Specifically, the objectives
are to: (1) develop and implement innovative models
for recruiting, mentoring and retaining minority students
in SME doctoral programs and (2) develop effective
strategies for identifying and supporting under-represented
minorities who want to pursue academic careers.
The MGE program was developed in response to ongoing
U.S. congressional concerns about trends in the nation's
education and development of minorities in science,
mathematics and engineering fields. It was also created
to fulfill NSF's continuing commitment to minority
graduate education.
An additional three-year award of $450,000 total is
going to the American Association for the Advancement
of Science to study and evaluate factors that affect
minority under-representation. Both federal and private
institutions have invested significant resources to
increase minority representation in advanced SME study
and careers. Some exemplary programs exist, but there
has been limited progress overall.
"Industry, government and academia all suffer from
a long-standing under-utilization of minorities in
the sciences, mathematics and engineering, due to
the small pool of minority talent holding Ph.Ds.,"
said MGE coordinator Jesse Lewis. "This failure to
prepare and develop SME capability in such a large
segment of the U.S. population is wasteful of precious
human capital resources and has serious consequences
for the nation's ability to compete in a world economy
driven by technological advances. The nation's citizens
also suffer loss of opportunity."
|