Making Black Scientists: A Call to Action is a brilliant new book that provides specific examples of 10 historically Black colleges and universities that are moving the needle when it comes to training and preparing Black students for careers in science, technology, engineering and math, known as the STEM fields.
While predominantly White institutions have long admitted to struggling with how to recruit and retain students of color, particularly in the STEM fields, they need only to read Drs. Marybeth Gasman and Thai-Huy Nguyen’s groundbreaking text to learn best practice models.
“Although others have written about success models and practices in STEM — including famed University of Texas mathematics professor Uri Treisman, and Freeman Hrabowski, the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County — we are concerned that the success models and strategies are not being used at most colleges and universities,” write Gasman and Nguyen. “This lack of use leads us to believe that many colleges and universities know the ways to ensure that African-American students succeed in STEM but do not have the will to use them.”
If there were more will, Gasman and Nguyen argue, “there would be more success across the board for African-American students in STEM.”
The major strength of the 245-page book published by Harvard University Press is that it includes the voices of students who share their experience studying STEM, and working with faculty who teach them. 
For example, Gasman and Nguyen introduce the reader to Danielle, a Dillard University student. She was in her last year of earning a degree in physics when the authors made a campus visit to interview her.
A native of California, Danielle decided to travel to New Orleans to complete her degree because she wanted the HBCU experience and attend an institution that had an outstanding track record of training students in STEM-related fields.
