Report States Minorities Still Underrepresented in Graduate Education
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 4, 2009
On April 23, 2009, at a Washington D.C. forum, the Council of Graduate Schools released a report entitled "Broadening Participation in Graduate Education," which states that graduate schools are failing to reflect the diversity of the country.
A select group of deans, government representatives and industry stakeholders attended the forum, including IU Dean of the University Graduate School James C. Wimbush.
"Now is the time to reverse this troubling trend by fully developing our domestic talent pool, particularly people from traditionally underrepresented groups, in order to create the highly skilled work-force necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy," the council said in a press release.
In addition to summarizing the state of diversity in U.S. graduate programs, the report highlights successful efforts. These include two programs supported at IU -- the Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) and the McNair Scholar's Program.
As a speaker on a best practices panel, Dean Wimbush gave an overview of IU's history of embracing diversity. He pointed out that IU opened its doors to teachers from the south to get master's degrees, and that the first student on the New Albany campus was an African-American female graduate student.
As an example of current practices, Wimbush spoke about the Herbert STEM initiative -- a collaboration between IU and 11 different Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The initiative encourages summer research and faculty exchanges, and offers a graduate fellowship for exemplary students from HBCUs in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
Programs such as these are of increasing importance in light of this new report, Wimbush said, which shows that while the number of doctoral degrees in science and engineering earned by underrepresented minorities doubled in the last two decades, these degrees comprise about 10 percent of the total STEM doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens. Hispanic and African-American students are particularly underrepresented in science and engineering graduate programs, where each group makes up less than 10 percent of graduate students and less than 5 percent of new Ph.D.'s.
Fellow panelists included University Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Maria Allison from Arizona State University and Vice Provost for Graduate Studies Karen Weddle-West from the University of Memphis.
Learn more about the CGS report or contact Erika Lee from the University Graduate School at ebigalee@indiana.edu.
