printable versionFaculty urged to work toward increasing graduate diversity
BY MICHAEL PEÑA
The Faculty Senate heard a report on graduate student body diversity last week that urged Stanford's biggest schools and departments to look critically at their record of admitting women and underrepresented minorities over the past 20 years and what they can do to increase those numbers in the years ahead as part of the university's mission to train a broadly diverse graduate population to take on leadership roles in society.
Gail Mahood, associate vice provost for graduate education, presented table after table of percentages—primarily, of applicants to graduate programs by gender and ethnicity, and what percent of them were then accepted and enrolled. Mahood also broke out the figures by professional schools—the School of Medicine, Graduate School of Business, School of Education and the Law School—and by the larger departments within the School of Engineering and the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S).
Combined, the professional schools and departments that admitted more than 40 students in 2005—the threshold Mahood set for qualifying as a "larger" department—represented 81 percent of all graduate admits last year. Although that left out some smaller departments and programs, Mahood said the statistics culled from the larger ones gave a good indication of graduate admission trends and put the spotlight on the places where change would have the most impact.
The presentation came on the eve of the upcoming graduate admission season. Her report focused on three years over the last two decades: 1985, which gave a snapshot before the 1989 findings of the University Committee on Minority Issues; 1995, which captured the climate prior to the passage of Proposition 209 and the financial impact of the dot-com bust to Stanford; and 2005, which provided some of the most current data.
During that 20-year period, the total number of applicants, admits and enrollees to graduate programs has increased, while the proportion of those admitted has declined and the yield—the percentage of those who accept admission and enroll—has increased, according to Mahood.
The trend for the proportion of women graduate students has been mixed but generally positive—with some departments lagging and others making "pretty spectacular progress," Mahood said in an interview prior to the Nov. 29 senate meeting. But the number of students from underrepresented minority groups who applied to Stanford, as well as their proportion among students who enrolled in graduate programs, both went down across most of the university.
"We are not educating the next generation of faculty members from traditionally disadvantaged groups at a rate that would replace our existing faculty, let alone contribute to the pool of PhD-educated minorities to staff industry, government or other universities," one slide read at the beginning of Mahood's presentation.
For the purposes of Mahood's report, underrepresented minorities excluded Asian Americans and international students. In 2005, 2.6 percent of the enrolled graduate students were African American, and 4.6 percent of them were Hispanic. According to the U.S. Census, the percentages of African Americans and Hispanics in the U.S. population in 2004 were 12.8 and 14.1, respectively.
Minority graduate student enrollment increased from 1985, peaked in the mid-nineties and then started declining, Mahood said. The banning of raced-based preferences at California universities—where many of Stanford's graduate students traditionally come from—after Proposition 209 played a part in that drop. Also around that time, a major budget crunch at Stanford hurt some diversity programs; and affirmative-action cases in Michigan and Texas caused some political ripples nationally and, locally, about what admissions practices are legal.
In autumn 2005, 124 underrepresented minority students were enrolled in the professional schools and large programs. That compares to 147 who enrolled in the same schools and departments a decade earlier, and 88 who enrolled in 1985. The increase over 1985 was due to larger enrollments in some of the professional programs.
Mahood also said there appeared to be a correlation between the growth in the proportion of women and underrepresented minority graduate applicants admitted to a department or school and the growth in the same interval in its proportion of women and minorities on the faculty. At least one faculty senator remarked afterward that wasn't the case in her department.
Stanford is doing poorly compared to national trends in the growth of graduate enrollment of underrepresented minorities, which has had an average growth of about 5 percent over this interval in most fields, Mahood said. But she added that it's "a mixed bag" when Stanford's current statistics are compared with peer institutions.
"In general, the proportions of women and underrepresented minority graduate students in our professional schools slightly exceed those at our peer institutions. But our ranking compared to Caltech, MIT, UC-Berkeley, the University of Michigan and our Ivy League peers for the biological sciences, physical sciences and engineering are nothing to brag about," Mahood said.
In the process of compiling her data over the last winter break, Mahood said she got "really grumpy" at first because she couldn't understand why some of the schools and departments were admitting so few graduate students from traditionally underrepresented groups. Then, when she looked at the data for the number of applicants over the same intervals, she realized the problem was that so few of them were applying—especially to the non-professional schools.
"The problem's not so much that we lack minority applicants. They apply in the thousands," said Mahood, professor of geological and environmental sciences. "The problem is, they apply to the professional schools, which have admit rates which are very low due to the limitations they have on teaching capacity."
Mahood added that those students also apply to the humanities and social sciences, "which don't have large amounts of funding for graduate students. And they apply in very tiny numbers to the natural sciences and engineering, where we have the greatest potential for supporting them."
Sociology Professor Karen Cook pointed out that while the university and faculty may see this as a problem, those applying may not—they are just following their heart. Mahood agreed. But the backdrop for her presentation was a report last June by the Provost's Graduate Diversity Action Council, which found that the number of minority students had not increased over the last decade, and, as a proportion of PhD students, declined.
To that end, Mahood discussed three programs aimed at increasing diversity within the graduate student population. One replaces Graduate Diversity Admit Weekend with two new events. The first event, called Biosciences Preview Day, was held on Oct. 20 and brought 14 prospective applicants to campus. The second event, on Feb. 23, is being spearheaded by diversity officers from H&S, Engineering and Earth Sciences; prospective students will participate in various activities, including campus tours, meeting with faculty for interviews and joining deans, the provost and president for lunch and dinner.
The February event will include after-dinner remarks by education Professor Patricia Gumport, who becomes vice provost of graduate education on Jan. 1.
The second program, which Mahood started last year, will offer through the graduate education office $500 for travel expenses that individual faculty members can use to bring applicants or admitted students to Stanford. The goal of the program is to enhance a broad sense of diversity in the graduate population, and Mahood said no pre-established minimum or limit will be imposed on the allocations.
"It is a case-by-case thing. But that's the point," Mahood explained prior to the meeting. "Faculty have to understand that in some of these fields, the numbers of underrepresented minorities and women—for example—are so small that one student really matters."
The third program is a pilot of the Arthur Walker Program. Named in honor of the late physics professor who worked hard during his career to increase diversity at Stanford, the program will bring together students from underrepresented groups—such as traditionally disadvantaged ethnic groups, first-generation college attenders and, in some fields, women—at the graduate and undergraduate levels at Stanford for faculty and visitor lectures, field trips and meetings about career development.
The objective, Mahood said, is to encourage the undergraduate students to pursue graduate degrees in science and engineering and "create a community of scholars." Sally Dickson, associate vice provost for faculty development, is working on the seminar series, which will begin this spring through funding from the President's Office.
Toward the end of her report, Mahood urged faculty to take a number of steps. One included trying to read applications more "holistically," where faculty would not just look at Graduate Record Exam scores but also recognize if a student with limited resources has done well academically despite being disadvantaged socio-economically.
Mahood also suggested that departments move toward an admission strategy that is more like what occurs at the professional schools and at the undergraduate level, "where we assemble a class rather than making one-by-one decisions from a ranked list," she said. "And we want to keep in mind the broader impacts that applicants might have on society when they leave here with a degree."