Content area
Full Text
How one university is changing a sink-or-swim culture to broaden the appeal of a Ph.D.
When Monica Gutierrez arrived at Duke University to enter a biomedical Ph.D. program, she met few people like her.
An immigrant from Colombia, she had taken a path through community college and the University of South Florida to get here. She enrolled with only a general sense of what it would take to become a scientist. She was hesitant to ask questions in class and embarrassed to admit that she did not always understand the material.
Concerned that people like Ms. Gutierrez -- who are from groups underrepresented in Ph.D. programs and in faculty ranks -- too often lose their way or achieve less than they are able, Duke's School of Medicine sought to bolster its support systems. Taking an unusually holistic and aggressive approach, the university has created an Office of Biomedical Graduate Diversity to get more minority students in the door and through to a doctorate as active participants in the community. The office has broadened recruiting strategies, sought to demystify the graduate experience, and created a web of support to reduce feelings of isolation and inadequacy.
If the nation's colleges are going to succeed at diversifying the professoriate, work has to be done here, at this crucial point in the pipeline. It's a concern commonly cited by students and others demanding that their campuses improve their climate on race: Even as the student body grows more diverse, the faculty has remained stubbornly white. Only about 12 percent of full-time faculty members are black, Hispanic, or Native American.
At its core, Duke's efforts -- which have shown early signs of success -- are about creating a sense of belonging, taking concrete action to support students and counteract a sink-or-swim mentality.
For Ms. Gutierrez, who is now in her fourth year, professors, staff members, and students involved with the diversity office helped break down the graduate-student experience into manageable steps, offering guidance along the way. With help from a monthslong preparation process run in part by older students, she aced her preliminary exams. With the encouragement of professors, she applied for and received a fellowship from the National Institutes of Health. And she has been invited to speak at...