In partnership with the Dayton Board of Education and the business community, Wright State University is building a multi-faceted model program for maximizing the number of highly motivated and academically competent women and minority students at Dunbar Magnet High School so that they go on to earn baccalaureate (and higher) degrees in the natural sciences. Demographically, minority students constitute 80% of the student body at Dunbar; the students are equally divided by sex. To attain the goal, several strategies are being included: strengthening pre-college science and mathematics courses, offering a health-related scientific professions orientation course, broadening students' science background by discussing new discoveries, field-trips, demonstrations to illustrate concepts, giving students hands-on laboratory experience so that the "do science", workshops for teachers, opportunity for summer research for students and teachers under the supervision of faculty mentors, encouraging teachers and selected students to accompany their mentors to professional meetings, and sensitizing faculty about the educational needs and "culture" of women and minorities. Since most public high schools in large cities have racial demographics similar to Dayton's, the project has high potential for replication.
