Programs push minority students toward academia

Love of the classroom first sparked Afia Ofori-Mensa's interest in graduate study. But only after the 2002 College alumna joined the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program at Penn did she firmly decide on the academic route.

Penn is one of 34 schools nationwide that participates in MMUF, a program that aims to boost the number of minority faculty in higher education. Currently, the program at Penn has five student fellows, with a total of 53 participants since its founding in 1988. But MMUF is just one program that Penn participates in with the hope of mentoring and guiding minority students into graduate school.

"There is a national crisis in the numbers of underrepresented minority students proceeding to [Ph.D. degrees] and thus becoming part of the pool for academic employment," Interim Provost Peter Conn said.

One explanation often cited for the difficulty of recruiting and retaining minority faculty members is the limited pool of available scholars. But universities are not only creating the demand for minority scholars -- they also are the ones training and producing the supply.

Realizing its function as a producer of future scholars, Penn has sponsored a number of programs to strengthen the pipeline of minority students going into academia.

Ofori-Mensa, now a third-year graduate student in American Studies at the University of Michigan, said that the mentoring and research funding provided by MMUF were invaluable for her in making the transition from the undergraduate to the graduate level.

"It was extremely useful as an early socialization process into the academy," Ofori-Mensa said.

Along with MMUF, Penn also participates in the McNair Scholars Program, which targets both underrepresented minority and first-generation college students. By providing research opportunities, mentoring and a stipend, the McNair program hopes to guide its students toward pursuing doctoral degrees. The federally funded program, which began in 1999, currently has 15 fellows at Penn.

"Coming to Penn and seeing the lack of professors of color was really daunting for me," College junior and McNair Scholar Andrine Wilson said, adding that she decided to pursue a doctoral degree because she wanted to change the situation and dispel stereotypes in academia.

Although the majority of students coming out of these programs will go on to become professors elsewhere, the hope is that if a number of institutions work on encouraging minority students to remain in academia, the overall pool of talented minority faculty will gradually grow.

Mentoring, which both programs stress, is particularly important because it demystifies the path to professorship.

"It is so rare that anyone really finds out what [faculty] life is about, and it's even rarer [for students of color] because of the absence people of color in these positions that the students of color that [can] see," Chairman of the Legal Studies Department Kenneth Shropshire said. "The absence of role models just makes this whole thing a vicious circle."

English professor and MMUF faculty coordinator Herman Beavers agreed that mentoring is often key.

"The students who I have sent to graduate schools from Penn I have identified early. I asked the questions and kept after them. ... What I often [found] is that they have never thought about it before."

The problem has obvious historical roots. Penn's first fully affiliated black faculty member, William Fontaine, did not receive tenure until 1963. And it was not until several decades later that academia in general became a real middle-class option for blacks.

Even now, the low number of minority faculty on campus means that black or Latino students do not see very many minority professors, and "it's inconceivable to them that [academia is] a viable route for them," Beavers said.

Additionally, in Penn's case, with a dominating preprofessional environment, it is even harder to make academia attractive, since many employers are also emphasizing diversity by heavily recruiting minority students.

But some see the pipeline problem as something that begins earlier than the undergraduate level. Vice Provost for University Life Valarie Swain-Cade McCoullum is convinced that an effective pipeline begins as early as elementary school.

With programs in place that target neighborhood public schools like Sayre Middle School, McCoullum thinks that Penn has been succeeding at reaching talented minority students at young ages, encouraging them to pursue further education, first at an undergraduate level and possibly beyond.

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