Lawrence Henschen Northwestern University
SES-0750599 John Hansen University of Chicago
SES-0750656 Charles Halaby Judy Roller University of Wisconsin-Madison
SES-0750630 Robert Kaufman Ohio State University
SES-0750618 Evelynn Ellis Chalandra Bryant Eva Pell Pennsylvania State University
SES-0750612 Aquiles Iglesias Zebulon Kendrick Temple University
SES-0750612 Deborah Richie University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The grant provides continued (three-years) support for the Great Lakes Alliance for Social and Behavioral Sciences (GLASS) Alliance. GLASS is comprised of seven universities--Northwestern University (Alliance lead institution), University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign, University of Chicago, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Wisconsin, and Temple University. The Alliance seeks to broaden the participation of PhD students in the social and behavioral sciences by: (1) engaging in coordinated activities across the seven universities, (2) increasing coordination of activities on each campus, (3) and studying the impact of various techniques on promoting diversity in graduate education. GLASS will focus on increasing the number of minority students enrolled in alliance institutions' graduate programs in the social, behavioral and economic sciences, the establishment of permanent infrastructure on each campus and across alliances to support diversity and a diverse population of graduate students, and the development of a publishable set of techniques and guidelines that can be used by any university and creates a national forum for the exchange of ideas and best practices for promoting diversity in the academy.
The value added of the alliance structure includes: 1) alliance-level activities (e.g., an annual student research conference and the creation of common recruiting materials and coordinated recruiting efforts; 2) recruitment through the implementation of an Alliance Visiting Scholars Program and coordination of recruiting efforts at major conferences, fairs and university visits; 3) increased retention of students due to a cadre of social and behavioral professors and scholars who provide an instant, multi-level mentoring network and enable transition programs; and 4) increased activities and programs targeted at undergraduates in a wider range of universities and colleges to increase the pool of potential graduate students. The number of universities in the alliance also allows the PIs to analyze the effectiveness of new strategies for broadening participation and the transference of existing techniques to new settings.
Broader Impact: The alliance model contribute to creating a diverse graduate education student body and faculty at US colleges and universities. Further the Alliance will develop written materials that can be distributed to all universities in the US could form the basis for a national exchange of ideas about alliances as a strategy to broaden participation in US institutions of higher learning.
(SBES). As an Alliance, weproposed to increase the diversity of PhD students in the social and behavioral sciences by: engaging in coordinated activities across the seven universities, establishing permanent programs and increasing activities on each campus, studying the impact of various techniques on promoting diversity in graduate education. Key elements of the plan included: Alliance?level activities Recruitment activities Retention and Professional Development programs Evaluation data collection and analysis Building Local Infrastructure As a partner in GLASS, Ohio State University's College of Arts and Sciences has worked to increase the representation of URM students in the SBES through activities and programming in the areas of recruitment, retention, and professional development, and we have engaged in creating infrastructure, programs and faculty awareness for the pursuit of diversity. At Ohio State, six disciplines were targeted during the project period: Anthropology, Economics, Geography, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. The major contribution of this project is to the development of human resources. But this project also has the potential to contribute to the intellectual vitality of the targeted disciplines within the social, behavioral and economic sciences. As Wilson (1992:4, National Academy Press) argues: "New entrants bring questions, fresh ideas, new and different perspectives on old problems, new energies, and new skills. They are not blinded by the familiar. The experience they bring enlarges the repertoire of strategies that can be employed. They are therefore an important factor in making successful transitions and for accommodating change. ... The strategy of using diversity to assure long?term vitality is not new, of course. It has worked very well in nature, in investments, in business development, in education, and in our culture." Moreover, the project has the prospect of promoting the cross-fertilization of ideas and research across disciplines as it fosters interaction and intellectual exchange among not just students but also faculty from an expanded set of disciplines. The long-term goal of the GLASS AGEP SBES is not just to increase graduate student diversity in a set of targeted disciplines in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, but also to develop effective strategies and techniques that could be adopted or adapted by a wide range of science and engineering disciplines. Developing human resources in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences is a central contribution of this project. In the shorter term, GLASS is working not just to increase the recruitment of URM students into graduate study in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, but to provide programming and other resources to facilitate their professional development and success in graduate school and to promote their successful transition into the academy as scholars and teachers. The annual summer workshop, "Surviving Your First Year as an Assistant Professor," we first offered in 2008 (and continue to offer) is an exemplar of this effort. Thus, the project is contributing not just to the training of current students but also developing human resources for the training of future students. In the longer term, the changing landscape of the demographics of race and ethnicity in the U.S. means that the project should assist in the creation of a more diverse academy which can better serve and better represent the diverse student body whom they will be educating. This project has created an important change in the institutional infrastructure for education within the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State. It was responsible for the creation of a full?time Diversity Director position in the Division (and now the College of Arts and Sciences) to serve as AGEP-SBES Graduate Diversity Coordinator, to work closely with departments, faculty, administrators and students on recruitment, admissions, retention and advocacy. The fact this position shifted during the grant renewal period (2007-2010) from predominantly grant-supported to entirely College-supported (as of October 1, 2010) indicates how this has been institutionalized. The position has also been elevated to Assistant Dean for Strategic Recruitment and Diversity Initiatives in the College to give more prominence and visibility to diversity issues and to signal our ongoing commitment to broadening participation initiatives. And we expect additional changes will occur as a result.
