Henry Frierson University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
SES-0549031 Robert Schwab University of Maryland, College Park
SES- 0548909 Steven Ullmann University of Miami
SES-0549057 Anne Donnelly University of Florida
SES-0548986 Orlando Taylor Howard University
The goal of the Atlantic Coast Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (AC-SBE) Alliance, consisting of Howard University, the University of Florida, the University of Maryland at College Park, the University of Miami, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is to increase the number of under-represented minority students receiving PhD degrees in the social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences and ultimately entering the professoriate. All five universities are among the nation's leaders in awarding PhDs in the SBE fields to underrepresented minority students. The plan for the AC-SBE Alliance includes elements designed to help students at each step as they move from undergraduate school into graduate programs and onto the professoriate. The consortium has four objectives: (1) Recruit and prepare undergraduates to pursue a PhD in SBE fields, (2) Assist students in the transition from undergraduate to graduate study, (3) Retain PhD students and increase degree completion rates, and (4) Prepare future SBE faculty for success. Although each of the five schools in the AC-SBE alliance has unique features, the AC-SBE Alliance will include a number of overarching activities that will involve all five universities. For one example, the Alliance will build upon Howard University's Summer Institute that prepares future faculty in the STEM disciplines to launch a parallel SBE component. Also, entering AC-SBE students will be invited to participate in a one-week course Introduction to Data Analysis for the Social Sciences at the Odum Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Odum Institute will also offer a number of videoconference short courses for AC-SBE students. Efforts will be made to ensure that the students in the SBE Alliance have further opportunities to interact and network at conferences such as the NSF-supported EMERGE.
Broader Impacts. Through integrating the resources of the five AC-SBE Alliance institutions, AC-SBE will have a broad impact across a wide region of the country in the eventual production of SBE PhD recipients. Thus, AC-SBE will serve as a comprehensive project for recruiting, mentoring, and graduating URM students in SBE PhD programs, and to carry out strategies to identify and broadly support URM students who want to pursue graduate studies and academic careers. The norms of inclusiveness at the AC-SBE Alliance institutions and the relationships that have been forged will endure well past the termination of grant support to continue efforts to ensure the significant numbers of minority students pursue and receive PhD degrees and enter the professoriate.
