Learning from the Past to Plot a Future

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Learning from the Past to Plot a Future
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The Reason is not Just Demographics, it is Health

• Health disparities are real
• The health disparity gap has not closed at all in
  the last 10 years

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Experiments that Work for Undergraduates

• Meyerhoff-like programs
• Minority Serving Institutions
• Bridge Programs
• Role models
• Minority serving scientific societies
• Precollege and college programs

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Maton, K.I., F.A. Hrabowski III, C.L. Schmitt.
2000. African American College Students
Excelling in the Sciences College and
Postcollege Outcomes in the Myerhoff
Scholars Program. Journal of Research in
Teaching Science. 37(7) 629 654.
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Undergraduate Programs that Work
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Retention of the Best Minority Graduates in
Science and Engineering

• Tsapogas, 2001, AAAS Making Strides, 3(1) 1-6.
• Minority science bachelors recipients were
  equally likely to be retained in S E education
  and employment
• High achieving minority bachelors recipients
  were more likely to be retained in S E

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Challenges

• Ph.D. org Graduate School 1999 Survey of 6,529
  students (Golde and Dore, 2001 Univ
  Wisconsin-Madison).
• 37 say their dept does not actively recruit
  minority students
• 49 of minority students think their dept does
  not provide a supportive environment for
  minorities (vs. 69 for Caucasians and Asians)

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What Can Graduate Training Programs Do?

• Learn from the successful undergraduate programs
  and emulate them
• Train cohorts of minority students, not one at a
  time
• Create a more supportive environment for minority
  students
• Allow and encourage minority students to
  transcend race but not their culture
• What else have we learned at this meeting?

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What have we learned?

• Individuals make a difference invest in local
  champions
• Lots of routes to success
• Institutionalize change
• Pipeline to faculty and leading scientists who
  are minorities is a big problem
• Clone NIGMS

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What can NIGMS do?

• Change supplement program
• Invest in leaders and mentors
• Develop program for faculty development