Dr. Debbie Bial’s Posse Foundation is answering President Obama’s challenge to colleges and universities to produce more STEM graduates from underrepresented groups.
Among the guests at the summit was Dr. Debbie Bial, president of the Posse Foundation. There she announced that the foundation’s STEM program would double the number of its partner institutions to 10 and provide $70 million in full-tuition scholarships to 500 Posse Scholars over the next five years.
It was a noteworthy moment for Bial and the foundation, which answered President Obama’s challenge to colleges and universities one year earlier to produce more STEM graduates from underrepresented groups. Many colleges responded, and five forged STEM partnerships with Posse, which works with dozens of top-tier colleges to recruit urban public high school students with academic and leadership potential who might be overlooked by such colleges.
The students, who are selected following a vigorous and highly selective three-step interview process, receive scholarships to attend these schools. Seventy-four percent of the selected students identify as Black or Latino and another 7 percent as multiracial, according to foundation officials.
It’s been 25 years since Bial, an educational strategist and former MacArthur Fellow, founded the Posse Foundation in New York City. Through most of these years, the foundation has been widely lauded for its work. In 2009, President Obama donated a portion of his Nobel Peace Prize money to the foundation.
Posse has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments since it first came into existence with a single partnership with Vanderbilt University. Through the foundation’s partnerships, more than 2,200 students from urban public schools have graduated from some of the nation’s leading universities, including Vanderbilt, Vassar, Pomona College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California, Berkeley. Foundation officials expect the number of Posse graduates to reach 6,000 by 2020.
Ninety percent of Posse students graduate from college within four years. A large percentage distinguish themselves academically and in leadership roles. Many have served as student body president, class president, resident advisors, peer counselors and presidents of student organizations. Many others have founded student organizations and been elected graduation speakers.
