NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Conference materials referred to it as a “game changer.” The National Science Foundation chief called it a “great return on investment.”
It’s been credited with having produced more than half a million holders of STEM bachelor’s degrees among underrepresented minority students — 509,954 to be exact.
But when it comes to one of the most critical questions concerning the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation or LSAMP — a congressionally mandated program meant to diversify the STEM workforce — there wasn’t exactly a wealth of answers at the annual LSAMP Research Symposium last week.
Such became apparent during the LSAMP “research and evaluation framework” session at the symposium, which marked 25 years since the program was born.
Asked if it was known to what extent LSAMP graduates had in fact gone on to work in the STEM workforce, Clemencia Cosentino, former director of the Program for Evaluation and Equity Research at the Urban Institute, acknowledged having made efforts to ascertain that information but did not succeed.
“I unfortunately cannot answer that,” Cosentino, co-author of a well-known 2006 evaluation of LSAMP, said when Diverse asked during a Q&A if it was known how many LSAMP graduates went on to STEM jobs.
Cosentino blamed the problem on “the way individual institutions track students down.”
