Minority Science Programs Seek Accountability

The federal government is beginning to take a close look at the accountability of programs designed to increase opportunities for minorities in science. Funding applications now require that grantee institutions set internal goals, fashion programs to meet those objectives, and become actively involved with government agencies in the evaluation process. Moves also are afoot to create an independently managed clearinghouse of data on such programs. But these changes are occurring under a shadow of uncertainty cast by as-yet-unresolved court actions regarding the legality of the programs themselves. MORE SCIENCE: QEM's Shirley McBay is trying to create an understanding that many students are underserved by science education. At the federal level, the targets of such funding schemes are "underrepresented minorities," typically defined as including, although not necessarily limited to, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. According to National Science Foundation figures, those three groups represented a combined 23 percent of the United States population in 1993 but earned only 12 percent of all bachelor's degrees in science and engineering. Although the latter statistic is an improvement on the combined 9.3 percent figure of 1985, attrition remains high for those groups, who are even more seriously underrepresented in doctoral programs and in the labor force. Bassam Shakhashiri, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, was a key figure in setting up minority science education funding through NSF in the 1980s, when he was its assistant director for science and education. "My concerns have to do with making available indicators of the [minorities-in- science] programs' progress toward achievement of the goals that have been set," he says. "The target has been these underrepresented groups, but the question is, can we get some indications that the programs have done anything?" Luther Williams, the successor to Shakhashiri since 1990 as NSF's assistant director of education and human resources, says he and a few other administrators who have been trying for years to establish such an entity are now are close to obtaining the cooperation of 30 to 40 funding bodies. These funders will provide data to a nonprofit, nongovernment agency, possibly beginning in 1999. Meanwhile, a Jan. 31, 1998, report from Academe Today, an online news service from the Chronicle of Higher Education, alleges that Williams is the unnamed subject of a Justice Department investigation into possible conflicts of interest and NSF funding. Williams declined to comment to The Scientist. In NSF, the bulk of support for minorities in science is provided through Williams's division, which has a 1998 budget for that purpose of $57.55 million. A graduate fellowship program provides another approximately $8 million annually, making a $65.5 million total. Nationwide, about 14,000 undergraduate degrees and 350 doctorates were awarded to minorities in science in 1990. That year, NSF began to analyze such other relevant figures as the size of the minority science student pool, the average time needed to graduate, and the percentage who obtained degrees, to set goals for the year 2000. It was decided to aim for 50,000 baccalaureate degree recipients and 2,000 doctorates by the turn of the century, although proportional parity compared with nonminorities would amount to 80,598 baccalaureates and 5,410 doctorates for underrepresented minorities. NSF funds were then directed toward programs that could help to reach the targets. Williams says the baccalaureate program is on course, with an average annual growth of 14.5 percent. However, the doctorate numbers still lag far behind, constituting "a 30-year, abject tragedy." Even for those few who achieve a doctorate, he warns, "The professional activities in maximizing opportunities to be on a faculty or to do research have to be understood, the practices and procedures-the business, as I call it, of being a scientist." He adds, "Beyond an in-crease in the numbers of minority graduates, there needs to be an awareness of these industrial and social practices in order to survive in an arena that is still hostile, let me be straightforward about it." NEW APPROACHES: NIH has revised its minorities-in-science programs to make them more responsive to grantees, notes NIGMS's Clifton Poodry. Clifton Poodry, director of the Division of Minority Opportunities in Re-search (MORE) in the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), oversees the three major NIH programs that affect minorities in the biomedical sciences. His 1998 budget for them is $74.5 million, about 20 percent of which is funded through cooperative arrangements with other NIH institutes. These programs embrace students, faculty, and other personnel who are nonsalaried or salaried, in both trainee and more senior positions. "Over the last 31/2 years, we've been most concerned with making our programs really effective," Poodry says. "The point has been to revise the programs to help them evolve in a way that makes them more helpful to the institutions involved and more responsive." A key element of this revision has been to encourage participating colleges, universities, and scientific societies to structure proj-ects that promote improvements as measured against baselines within each institution, such as its student or personnel retention and advancement rates. Poodry offers a hypothetical example: Instead of merely applying for NIGMS funding of summer research experiences for minorities, a university might devise workshops to better prepare the students for the summer re-search, then require a written academic report. Lately, however, court actions concerning affirmative action issues (see story on page 1) have forced NIH, NSF, and other organizations to reconsider such minority programs. "How do we remedy a situation within the law and not deny someone their rights, while trying to achieve this diversity?" Poodry muses. He thinks the answer lies in giving the grantees the latitude they need to devise and monitor effective programs that are appropriate to their differing goals and needs, always bearing in mind the basic rationale, which is the existence of population segments that are "underserved" in science education and career opportunities. From the NIH point of view, he opposes the notion of consolidating minority programs under one institute. "I think each of the institutes should have responsibility for all Americans, and I don't want to create a minority ghetto." The molecular biology students at Hillside High School in Durham, N.C., aren't hard to spot: They're the ones in the white lab coats, occupied at their individual gel electrophoresis centers. There's no shortage here of any equipment needed for genetic recombination experiments. A polymerase chain reaction machine? No problem. "I call it our Xerox for DNA," jokes Hillside science teacher Kenneth Cutler. His dynamism played a key role in the decision in November 1996 by officials at NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to step virtually next door to their headquarters at Research Triangle Park, N.C., and select Hillside for a national model program aimed at heightening student involvement in the sciences. The public high school has a 96 percent African American student population, and the goal of the program is to enhance the probability that more students, especially from minority groups, will enter careers in science. DNA ENTHUSIASTS: Hillside High science teacher Kenneth Cutler has sparked keen student interest in molecular biology. NIEHS extended a long-term loan of more than $90,000 in lab equipment and support to Hillside. Along with the hardware came agency scientists who volunteered their Saturdays to train teachers in its use. Media coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial, cloning, and various paternity cases all have sparked student interest in what Cutler calls "the molecular basis of heredity." What's more, Hillside kids have begun scooping up science prizes at competitions run by groups as diverse as the community newspaper, the North Carolina State Fair, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Four of eight North Carolina student delegates to the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Philadelphia this month were slated to come from Hillside. And labs at academic and corporate institutions are snapping up the students for summer internships. The next goals: The lab will be made available in afternoons to students from other schools in the district; a strong relationship will be developed with the two-year biotechnology program at Durham Community College to help Hillside students obtain skills for technical lab work; and Hillside's distance learning facilities will be employed to extend the knowledge beyond Durham. "I'd love to have a Nobel laureate from among my students," Cutler acknowledges. "But the purpose of science education is to have a scientifically literate society."-S.B. NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Research Triangle Park, N.C., has developed a range of programs over recent years that focus on promoting science among another demographic group: students from kindergarten through high school. "The whole concept for an institution like NIH to address the K-12 school level would have been unheard of 25 years ago," says Marian Johnson-Thompson, assistant to the director for education and biomedical research development. She is particularly pleased with school district and community participation in a model project launched in late 1996 at Durham, N.C., to teach molecular biology at a mostly black high school. "We've had involvement from churches to civic leaders to parents and businesses, and we even had the state legislature involved." She says this strategy amounts to systemic change, from an almost exclusive concentration on individual competition to cooperation and inclusiveness. SYSTEMIC CHANGE: Science funding for schoolchildren was unthinkable in NIH 25 years ago, according to NIEHS's Marian Johnson-Thompson. Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network, a Washington, D.C.-based, nonprofit group named by Williams as a leading candidate to become the minority program clearinghouse next year, published a report last September on its NSF- funded survey of 104 colleges and universities in 17 states-primarily in the East and the South-that enroll almost 80 percent of the nation's minority students who enter into higher education. Meetings were held in the states, which now are being encouraged to annually produce math, science, and engineering (MSE) graduates in amounts that represent their proportionate "fair shares," based upon each state's percentage of the total U.S. minority enrollment in higher education. The current fair share leader, in both baccalaureate and doctoral degrees, is North Carolina. It produced almost 1,670 MSE baccalaureates from underrepresented groups in 1996, or about 111 percent of its share. However, 60 doctorates annually are required to reach its share goal, and only 21 were awarded in 1996. Last year, North Carolina was targeted as the first in a series of QEM action plans for states to achieve their proportionate goals. The state's plan, published this month, was produced with the help of a steering committee that comprised 25 leading teachers, professors, principals, administrators, and politicians with education portfolios. QEM president Shirley McBay now says, "We'll go to a different state, where the racial and ethnic groups are different." A likely choice is Texas, where English as a second language to a large Hispanic population is another hurdle to overcome. In terms of funding for action plans, McBay says, "The challenge is to get people to understand that we have a growing number of the population whose math and science needs are not being attended to. But the commitment being shown on many campuses gives us the feeling that we're not alone."

Minority Science Programs Seek Accountability

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