We propose to establish an alliance for increasing diversity in graduate education and the professoriate in Louisiana. Alliance partners will include Tulane and Louisiana State University (the two Carnegie Research I universities in the state and the institutions responsible for 94% of the minority doctoral degree production in the state between 1994-2001), Xavier University of Louisiana, Dillard University, and Southern University Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The Graduate Alliance for Education in Louisiana (GAELA) will build upon existing minority SME research training programs at these institutions, and develop new programs to encourage more minority students to pursue SME graduate education and academic careers. One of the goals of the GAELA project will be the early identification and nurturing of promising students during their undergraduate years. A concerted effort will be made to recruit doctoral fellows from participants in LS-LAMP, the College Fund - Xavier AMP, and other pre-graduate training programs in the state. We expect that the nurturing students receive in these programs, and the familiarity they gain working with faculty at Tulane and LSU will increase their chances of successfully completing their doctoral training.
The second major goal of the GAELA Program will be to affect significant change in the culture of graduate education at the State of Louisiana's top research universities in order to significantly increase minority SME doctoral degree production. We have set a numerical goal of 45 Ph.D. per year by 2006, more than triple the 2001 annual output on minority doctoral degrees. The project has a strong component of recruitment and early exposure of students to academic career opportunities focused on participating HBCU's, and a variety of retention activities focused on the two graduate research institutions.
The recruitment component consists of exposing students at HBCU's to study and academic career opportunities at LSU and Tulane through recruiting visits by LSU and Tulane faculty, annual recruitment fairs on Tulane and LSU campuses, and involving HBCU students in Tulane/LSU faculty-mentored research. We will establish GAELA campus programs at Xavier, Dillard, SUBR and SUNO to coordinate these activities. The retention component will consist of mentoring workshops for Tulane and LSU faculty, awarding research funds and professional travel grants to doctoral students that are making satisfactory progress toward completing their degrees, SME academic career training sessions, and #I survival sessions" for helping minority students cope with the majority graduate educational environment.
