Baltimore, Md. — In the 1970s, Norman Francis’ epic tenure as president of the nation’s only Black Catholic University was just beginning, and at the same time, he learned that the number of Black students in the nation’s medical schools was dwindling. Unequal education, he concluded, was robbing Black students of their chance to even get into college, let alone medical school.
Francis decided to take on the country’s problem and seize an opportunity for his small campus to help fill the gap.
Xavier University of New Orleans, which housed its science department in a donated Army warehouse, operated on shoestring budget and lacked new equipment, was an unlikely training ground for science majors, most of whom were the first in their families to go to college. But Francis’ plan succeeded where even Ivy League schools failed.
Today, more than four decades later, the national pipeline for African-Americans entering and graduating from medical school begins at Xavier. His vision catapulted Xavier students to the top — the university is first in the nation in graduating Black students with bachelor’s degrees in biology and physics.
Last week, Francis, now president emeritus of Xavier, was among five honorees inducted into the STEM Leadership Hall of Fame during a special ceremony here at the STEM Solutions National Leadership Conference sponsored by US News & World Report. The award “recognizes individuals who have been instrumental in leading national efforts to improve STEM education and workforce development,” said Brian Kelly, US News editor and chief content officer.
National Urban League President Marc Morial, in his keynote conference address, made an impassioned call for change in the STEM fields. That’s because the diversity needle hasn’t shifted upward. The 2016 US News/Raytheon STEM Index, released last week, showed women, African-Americans and Hispanics still lag far behind White and Asian men in earning degrees and landing jobs in science, technology, engineering and math — the STEM fields.
“You can’t keep doing the same old thing” and expect the STEM landscape to change, Morial said. In the 1970s, “before STEM was a word,” Morial recalled, Francis was that kind of change agent the field needed when he made growing the number of Black students in the STEM pipeline his focus.
