From College to Careers in Science: Increasing the Pool of Minority Researchers

Dr. David M. Bressoud former President of the MAA in a recent Congressional Briefing noted that,  "The 1990's saw significant decreases in both the number of Engineering majors and the number of Mathematics majors. Both numbers have since recovered, but to only just above the level of 1990. Disturbingly, the recent recoveries in both disciplines are powered almost entirely by white males and non-US residents . [Despite the fact that] African Americans have steadily improved their fraction of all bachelor's degrees awarded in the US, now approaching their percentage of the population . [and that for] . many years, African Americans were represented among Mathematics majors in proportion to their numbers . that has changed significantly since 1998. The number of African-Americans earning bachelor's degrees in Mathematics was higher in 1992 than in 2007, the latest year for which we have [these] data .The story is similar for Hispanic Americans ." Further, the belief that the problem of under-representation in the mathematical sciences is unsolvable within our lifetime unless the shortcomings in mathematics education at the K-12 levels are resolved, ignore the synergistic successes of Arizona State University, Cornell University, North Carolina State University and the University of Iowa-different models with common objectives, goals, and perspectives. Program with shared practices and a large number of successes involving ignored pools of US students. In this conversation, I will re-introduce a model, known as the Mathematical, Theoretical Biology Institute or MTBI [details appearing in the forthcoming article, ""A Preliminary Theoretical Analysis of an REU's Community Model" to appear in, Problems, Resources and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, 2012, co-authored with Carlos Castillo-Garsow], a model of mentorship and training that has dramatically increased the number, particularly of US Latinos pursuing and completing a PhD in the mathematical sciences. The reproducibility of the MTBI model is not in question; we have successfully applied it at Arizona State University and Cornell University. However, the will and incentives needed to get us over the threshold leading to the kind of changes, needed to alter the dynamics of underrepresentation, are the weak links of the system.