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.
This is the final report of a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded "Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate" (AGEP) program focused on social, behavioral, and economic sciences (SBE). The goal of these AGEP programs is to increase the number of under-represented minority (URM) students who obtain graduate degrees in the SBE disciplines and to increase the number of URM faculty in these areas. The Great Lakes Alliance for the Social and Behavioral Sciences (GLASS) collaboration included Northwestern as the lead university, along with Ohio State, Penn State, the University of Urbana/Champaign, Temple University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the approach that was adopted was to select five units among the many SBE disciplines to participate in this AGEP program. These units included two departments (Psychology, Sociology) and two schools (School of Social Work, School of Library and Information Sciences, SLIS) within the College of Letters & Sciences as well as a cross-college unit (Educational Policy Studies). Funds from this grant were used to augment recruitment of URM graduate students and to enhance retention efforts by supplementing research and study support for graduate training. The Psychology Department used AGEP funding to host an annual Diversity Day and to support travel to campus for prospective URM students. This department also provided financial support for professional conference travel for URM graduate students as well as summer research stipends awarded through a competitive process. The Sociology Department provided travel funds and recruitment brunches with faculty for all admitted URM students, held bi-monthly solidarity dinners for URM students as a forum for building support networks and exchanging information, and provided funding for URM students to attend professional conferences in order to present their research or attend a summer statistics program. The School of Social Work used AGEP funding to develop more recruitment materials, create a resource manual for incoming students of color, bring prospective students to campus overnight for a recruitment visit, and send URM students to a variety of educational events and professional conferences. SLIS devoted its grant resources to recruitment visits, hiring tutors, and providing financing for conference travel for URM graduate students. Similarly, Educational Policy Studies used AGEP funding to host a visitation weekend for prospective URM students, provided summer research stipends, and offered travel grants to allow students to attend their first academic conference or present their first academic paper. Funding from the NSF AGEP program has made a significant impact on both recruitment and retention of URM students such that the enrollment and graduation of URM students in our five participating units increased dramatically. The total number of URM applicants in the participating units increased 14% during the funding period, whereas overall university numbers of graduate applications declined or stayed the same. The total number of URM students who matriculated in the five AGEP SBE units increased more than 120% and the number of URM graduate students awarded degrees by these units increased by 50% during the period of funding.
