HR: 11:20h
AN: ED11C-05 INVITED     [PDF]
TI: Recruiting Minority Geoscientists: A 30 Year Success Story
AU: * Serpa, L
EM: lserpa@uno.edu
AU: Pavlis, T L
EM: tpavlis@uno.edu
AU: Hall, F
EM: frhall@uno.edu
AB: The University of New Orleans (UNO) is located in a city rich in diversity and industries that employ geoscientists. Thus, it is an ideal place to develop a strong diversity program in geology and geophysics. In 1974, Dr. Louis Fernandez received a grant from the NSF to formally develop a minority recruiting program. The focus of that initial program was a field trip for local minority high school students and that trip has gone continuously every year since then. It is still our best tool for recruiting outstanding minority students into our department. The initial NSF funding disappeared long ago and was replaced variously by support from private industry and creative use of departmental funds which kept the program alive through some lean funding years. As a result of this effort UNO has graduated more minority, particularly African-American, geoscientist than any other institution in the US for most of the past 30 years. The field trip is not the only reason for our success. Indeed, retaining and graduating students, regardless of their ethnicity, required a serious commitment to education on the part of our department. There are six universities in the city of New Orleans and several more within commuting distance from the city. Three of the six local universities are HBCU's with excellent reputations but, fortunately for us, no geoscience degree programs. There are several strong geoscience departments in the non-minority serving institutions in our area that attract many outstanding local students. To meet the competition, we have worked with local K-12 teachers, developed additional programs to interest local 7-12 students, and worked closely with our majors to keep them in the program and help them succeed once they are recruited. This has required a cohesive effort on the part of our faculty and students that is constantly changing to meet new demands as our department has expanded in size and developed its research activities sometimes at the expense of teaching. The result is something we are very proud of-- 40% of our undergraduates and 20% of our graduate students are minority students. This is increasing each year, particularly the graduate enrollment, without any apparent decrease in non-minority enrollment or division within the student body.
UR: http://www.geology.uno.edu
DE: 6005 Atmospheres--composition and chemistry
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting