When it comes to increasing the number of underrepresented minority students who complete their Ph.D.s, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program—a longstanding initiative meant to diversify faculty at America’s colleges and universities—has “no significant effect,” a team of researchers concluded in a paper released Monday.
In a paper titled An Evaluation of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship’s Effect on Ph.D. Production at Non-UNCF Institutions—the researchers say they found “no evidence that participation in the program causes a statistically significant increase in the Ph.D. production rate of (underrepresented minority) students” and that the participants likely would have pursued a Ph.D. with or without the program.
The paper was written by four researchers at the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, also know as CHERI.
However, the director of the MMUF program said the paper’s conclusion “stands in sharp contrast to regularly gathered student testimony and annual reporting from the leaders of the 46 participating MMUF institutions that the majority of their undergraduate fellows first thought of pursuing an academic career only when prodded by outreach from the program.”
“Other national researchers confirm that many students of color, first generation students and others are not exposed to knowledge about academic careers except in the context of structured outreach efforts of this sort,” said Armando Bengochea, director of the MMUF at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
“As the CHERI study acknowledges, its particular research question cannot account for the many value-added aspects of participating in MMUF, which position fellows to become highly professionalized and intellectually nimble undergraduate and graduate students,” he said.
Bengochea noted that 65 percent of fellows pursue graduate degrees, and 33 percent pursue a Ph.D. He said 204 have gone on to become tenure track faculty members, and 106 are tenured professors.
