The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) and eight other research universities have recently been granted a 3-and-a-half-year award funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to make the pathway of increasing diversity in academia more accessible for historically underrepresented minorities.
This research project is part of NSF’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program, in which universities collaborate to create evidence-based models that transform doctoral education, postdoctoral training and faculty advancement, particularly for students in mathematics, physical and earth sciences, and engineering (MPESE) fields.
Dr. Marvin L. Hackert, associate dean for the graduate school at UT Austin, said that underrepresented groups represent about 30% of the overall population. By the time those students get to graduate school, that drops down to only about 10% of the overall graduate student population. Similarly, only about 6% make up the post-doctorate population and about 5% make up the faculty, specifically in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
“So, we are trying to address what it takes to minimize this drop-off between elementary school to college to graduate school to postdoctoral to faculty positions,” he said, “to increase the representation of underrepresented groups that have leadership roles and faculty positions at research universities.”
In fact, UT Austin is building this new alliance from a former pilot program with The California Alliance Research Exchange Program, which provided opportunities to learn and network at partner institutions for underrepresented minority students.
“The NSF’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program seeks to advance knowledge about models to improve pathways to the professoriate and success for historically underrepresented minority doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty, particularly African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians and Native Pacific Islanders, in specific STEM disciplines and/or STEM education research fields,” said Michelle M. Negrón, a spokesperson for NSF, in an email.
Therefore, “if you want to support students in minority groups, you want to have a faculty that has a similar kind of racial and ethnic profile as your students for role models and mentoring,” said Dr. Mark J.T. Smith, dean of the graduate school at UT Austin. “Isolation can be a very difficult challenge for students when they’re part of a group that’s very underrepresented. And so, this [alliance] is very important for us to diversify our faculty.”
