Ralph Bunche Summer Institute

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

The Ralph Bunche Summer Institute is designed to expand opportunities for students-of-color by preparing black, Latino, and American Indian undergraduates to enroll in doctoral programs and become political science college and university professors. The Ralph Bunche Summer Institute immerses undergraduates in the summer of their junior year in a five-week intensive program that includes graduate level coursework, as well as the design, analysis, writing, and presentation of original research papers. The program simulates the graduate school experience and focuses on scientific analysis by introducing the students to research methods, statistics, and the research process in political science. Those students whose empirical papers are judged to be of high quality are invited to present their work in a poster session at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. The ultimate goal of the RBSI is to increase the number of black, Latino, and American Indian political science faculty in U.S. colleges and universities. The Ralph Bunche Institute provides a five-week intensive program for undergraduate students-of-color (black, Latino, and American Indian) that prepares them pursue a Ph.D in political science, with the goal of expanding opportunities for them in academia as professors and researchers. The program includes graduate level coursework, training in statistical/quantitative methods, and completion of an original research project. Outcomes from previous years suggest that the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute is succeeding in increasing the numbers of students-of-color in political science graduate programs and the numbers of blacks and Latinos with doctorates in political science (as well as several cognate social science fields). The program has also been successful in increasing substantially the number of students from these underrepresented groups with masters' degrees in political science and public policy, many of whom have gone into government service. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.