Planning for a Southwestern Regional Alliance to Broaden Participation

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

Rice University will lead an initiative of major southwestern research universities; Rice, the University of Texas-Austin, the University of New Mexico, The University of Arizona, the University of Houston, and Texas Tech University along with the states; partnering minority-serving institutions (MSI);to plan a next-generation alliance with the mission to increase the number of underrepresented minority (URM) students who pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) Ph.D.s and subsequently enter academic positions. Concentrated in the southwest is the nation's growing Hispanic population, Native Americans, and primarily in its cities, a significant number of African Americans. Schools in the southwest must increase participation to serve the needs of this citizenry. The participating universities can make a difference. They represent thousands of URM STEM undergraduates. Key participating faculty and administrators also provide experience and expertise that will be shared across the alliance. For instance, Arizona, New Mexico and Rice U have faculty members who are former Rice AGEP graduate students. The proposed project leadership has learned much from its eleven years of AGEP participation, and this knowledge will inform the work of this next-generation alliance, including a) it needs to do a better job of systematically motivating and inspiring URM undergraduates at research universities to pursue graduate studies, b) it needs to more fully and systematically engage faculty members, critical to the success of the program, for functions such as evaluating graduate admissions, mentoring, role models, academic graduate advising, selecting research advisors, advocating for post-doc and faculty placement, to name a few, c) it needs a systematic way to produce new faculty members, for most, through a post-doctoral fellowship, d) it needs to integrate the broadening participation effort more fully into the mainstream research, and e) it needs a more systematic way of defining participation in the AGEP program so that it is indeed increasing participation of the nation's URM population rather than merely increasing international minority participation. Alliance planning will be led by Rice University. Rice will begin this one year project by hosting an in-person meeting of participants from all universities to build understanding around a common vision and organize committees to continue planning from a distance. Subsequently, cross-institutional committees formed around strategic topics will meet weekly through teleconferences. Committee chairs will also meet weekly with the Project Director. To facilitate the planning, each committee will have staff support, and access to technologies that support distant collaboration. In addition to crafting a new alliance plan, the project will share through a report what is learned through this collaborative activity and disseminate it broadly. Intellectual Merit: This project will bring together many of the nation's leaders in the area of diversity to develop a next-generation AGEP --one that is focused strategically on producing URM faculty leaders. It builds on a base of experience and builds towards new understandings and efforts. Broader Impacts: No population is more critical to the health of the nation than that of the southwest, with its concentration of a growing Hispanic population, Native Americans, and concentrated in its cities, a significant number of African Americans, and because of this growth, none provides greater potential.