Brown U. Program Helps Minority Science Ph.D.'s to Thrive
By Stacey Patton
Brown University has significantly increased the proportion of black and Hispanic students in its life-sciences Ph.D. programs in recent years, and helped those students improve their academic performance, through a program that identifies gaps in undergraduate preparation and provides intensive training to help students master key skills.
When Brown started the program, in 2006-7, fewer than one in 20 Ph.D. students in biology and medicine were black or Hispanic. By the 2010-11 academic year, more than one in five students in those areas were. Before the program began, four of Brown's nine life-sciences Ph.D. programs did not have any black or Hispanic students at all. Now all of those programs have students in those minority groups.
The program, called the Initiative to Maximize Student Development and financed with a $1.7-million grant from the National Institutes of Health, could serve as a model for other universities, says Andrew G. Campbell, an associate professor of medical science in the department of molecular microbiology and immunology and a co-director of the program. Its outcomes were documented in a paper, published in March in CBE-Life Sciences Education, that says efforts like Brown's point the way toward how the nation can achieve a level of diversity in the sciences that approaches the diversity of the U.S. population.
Mr. Campbell, one of the paper's authors, says many institutions have "blind spots" in achieving diversity. Universities often say they struggle to find qualified minority applicants, he says, but programs like Brown's show that such applicants not only exist but can thrive.
Recruiters, Mr. Campbell says, don't always look in the right places for applicants from underrepresented groups. Sometimes relying too heavily on standardized-test scores excludes students, including some in minority groups, who have the potential to perform well in science fields.
Graduate programs often struggle to fill gaps in undergraduate preparation. And faculty members don't always know how to help minority students, who often feel isolated in their graduate programs and tend to suffer higher attrition rates than do their Asian and white peers.
"You've got to cultivate talent once they're in," Mr. Campbell says. "You can recruit almost anyone, but you want to retain them and help them succeed."
Partnerships and Training
Brown has developed partnerships with the College of Mount Saint Vincent, North Carolina A&T State University, St. John's University in New York, and York College of the City University of New York. Each year faculty members at those institutions, which serve large numbers of first-generation black and Hispanic students, meet with Brown professors, helping them learn about the cultural backgrounds of their students and details about their undergraduate training in science.
The partner institutions also encourage their students to consider applying to Brown's graduate programs.
Once enrolled at Brown, each student in the student-development program—a majority of them from the partner colleges—receives an individually tailored advising plan that identifies gaps in his or her undergraduate preparation. Then a committee of five faculty members advises students on taking the right courses and encourages them to join support networks of minority graduate students.
Students also enroll in supplemental, intensive training sessions offered in a classroom or laboratory setting. The sessions are designed to improve students' communication, critical-thinking, and quantitative skills, their time management, and their ability to do collaborative research. The noncredit sessions, which are also open to Ph.D. students who are not part of the program, are taught by faculty members and advanced graduate students who serve as peer mentors.
Mr. Campbell's paper compared the academic achievements of a cohort of minority and white Ph.D. students before and after Brown created the student-development program.
The comparisons of four categories of academic achievement showed that minority Ph.D.'s who were part of the program had significantly more scientific publications, competitive fellowship awards, conference presentations, and travel awards than did the minority Ph.D.'s who were at Brown before the program began. The cohort of minority Ph.D.'s who were in the program also approached parity in those four categories with their Asian and white peers.
Mr. Campbell says that the program has also led to an increase in minority applicants to Brown's life-sciences Ph.D. programs, and that the average grades and GRE scores of those candidates have increased.
"This paper shatters some misconceptions and quiets voices that say minorities don't perform well and can't succeed in science," Mr. Campbell says. "It's all about environment and support."
