Rice University Office of Media Relations
News Release DATE: March 2, 1999 99-107
CONTACT: Lia Unrau (713)831-4793 [email protected]
SCHOLARS: MORE MINORITIES IN SCIENCE GRAD SCHOOL CRITICAL
HOUSTON, March 2, 1999 -- Recruiting underrepresented minorities to science and engineering graduate schools and making sure they complete advanced degree work is a critical issue facing U.S. educators today, scholars say.
This issue is the focus of a conference to be held at Rice University March 11-12. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Engineering and Science Underrepresented Minority Ph.D. Recruitment and Retention Conference will be held in the Anne and Charles Duncan Hall on the Rice campus.
"As the number of minority students receiving undergraduate degrees in mathematics, science and engineering has edged slowly upward in recent years, the number entering Ph.D. programs has not kept pace," said Ted Greenwood, program director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "Indeed, there are some indications that the latter number might be declining. However, if the face of science and engineering in the United States is to change, then more minority individuals must receive Ph.D.s and join the faculties of our nation's universities. To achieve this result, the Sloan Foundation seeks out faculty in whom it has confidence that they can successfully recruit, mentor and graduate minority students with Ph.D.s in these fields. The Foundation provides financial support to the minority students that these faculty recruit and recruitment funding to the faculty."
Richard Tapia, the Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice, member of the National Science Board, and conference organizer, is one of the faculty with whom the Sloan Foundation works.
"Programs like the Sloan-funded one will become increasingly important in this post-affirmative action era," Tapia said, "if we are to prepare not only the quantity, but also the quality of students the country needs to solve the critical lack of minority leadership at the national level."
The conference will allow leaders and scholars from institutions participating in the Sloan Minority Program to discuss the current issues, challenges, and problems that affect minority graduate education, share ideas and solutions with the community of scholars working on this national-agenda issue, and target ways to strengthen and enhance their programs.
Keynote speaker Shirley Malcom, director of Education and Human Resources Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), will address "Science and Engineering: The Next Generation, How to meet the workforce needs of the future at a time of changing demographics."
"The growth in the workforce of the future will come from women and minorities," Malcom said. "As good jobs become more based in science and technology it is in everyone's interest to prepare students for them, including the interest of industry.
"I hope we can develop some concrete ideas about how to develop a high quality, diverse workforce to address America's workforce needs. Almost every industry says that human resources will be their major challenge for the 21st century. We need to help everyone realize what that workforce will look like and what strategies have been successful with underrepresented minority students."
Topics for presentations and discussion include Recruiting, Motivating Students to Pursue Graduate Education, Fostering a Cultural Shift in Majority Institutions, and Placing Graduates into Careers. A complete list can be found at
Last fall, Rice earned a $2.5 million, five-year Minority Graduate Education (MGE) grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant is allowing Rice to develop and explore effective means to recruit and retain underrepresented minorities into science and engineering graduate research programs.
The conference is sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Co-sponsors are the Center for Research on Parallel Computation, headquartered at Rice, the Education, Outreach, and Training team for the Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, Rice's MGE program, Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering, and Tapia's Center for Excellence and Equity in Education.
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Editors: For more information about the Sloan Engineering and Science Underrepresented Minority Ph.D.s Recruitment and Retention Conference see: http://www.crpc.rice.edu/CRPC/SLOAN/.
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: http://www.sloan.org/
Center for Research on Parallel Computation: http://www.crpc.rice.edu/CRPC/
Education, Outreach, and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure: http://www.eot.org/
George R. Brown School of Engineering: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~deanengr/
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