Establishment of Diversity Program at Ohio State University

By Renee Miller

The Department of Computer and Information Science (CS) of the Ohio State University (OSU) has recently established a new diversity program designed to increase the number of underrepresented minorities, specifically women and racial minorities, receiving advanced degrees and pursuing academic careers in computer science and computing-related fields. The program addresses a student's progress from undergraduate study through to academic employment. We believe such a comprehensive program is needed to implement systemic change in the department's climate in order to make the department not only open and accessible to women and minority students but aggressively attractive to them. In this article, we explain the components and goals of the program.

The diversity program is the result of an examination of the educational environment for minorities in OSU's CS Department. As part of this process, we conducted interviews with current, former, and prospective minority students; performed a data analysis of racial and gender diversity in our programs; and undertook a literature study of effective solutions for attracting, retaining, and promoting minority students in science and engineering fields. The conclusions of this study were that, throughout our program, we are losing talented minority students by not providing sufficient opportunities for these students to continue on to the next level of education. As noted in a similar study on the climate for women in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin:

Successfully navigating the road from novice student to highly skilled researcher and teacher requires a great deal of judicious guidance from people farther along the road. Much of the informal information about skills needed and opportunities available at each stage of the educational process is not communicated well to women in this department. We have found this to be true of both women and racial minorities who are severely underrepresented in the computer science academic community.

"...relatively few minority students are electing to continue with their studies despite their often substantial talents."

This has contributed to our current situation in which relatively few minority students are electing to continue with their studies despite their often substantial talents. Minorities are too often not being welcomed into the academic culture. Our findings are mirrored in national studies on minorities in science and computing.

To address these issues, we are drawing upon the model of a number of successful programs. We have chosen five specific activities, each targeted at a specific point in the educational process when we see minorities dropping out of the academic "pipeline." In addition to the individual effects of these activities, we believe they will improve the overall climate for minorities in the department by facilitating interactions among students and faculty. The programs, which we began implementing this summer, are funded by a "Faculty for the Future" grant from the GE Foundation (GEF). The three year grant includes $125,00 annually from GEF and $68,000 in matching funds from OSU. Our goal is to provide a stable core of students forming a growing, healthy community of minority students.

For undergraduate students, early exposure to research can be instrumental in both ensuring academic success and providing motivation for continuing study. Undergraduate research also fosters the development of mentoring relationships between faculty and students. Mentoring is touted by many to be a key component of successful efforts to increase the representation of minorities in CS. Evaluations of CRA's Distributed Mentor Project, in particular, have demonstrated the positive impact of mentoring and early involvement in research for undergraduate women. Despite its many advocates, obstacles to the development of successful mentoring programs remain. Predominant among these is that the incentive structure of academic institutions does not value mentoring activities. Exacerbating this situation is the fact that most minority faculty who can act as valuable role models for minority students are junior faculty. These faculty are under tenure pressures which all but prohibit participation in activities, such as mentoring and undergraduate research, that are not valued in promotion decisions. To increase the chances of success for our undergraduate mentoring program, we provide incentives, in the form of research support for faculty who participate in the program. Specifically, mentors are provided with an unrestricted research gift of $4,000-$6,000 annually, in addition to funding for undergraduate stipends. The money can be spent for research assistants, administrative support, or release time. We believe such incentives are a step in the right direction, but admittedly fall far short of the systematic institutional changes required to enable assistant professors to partake substantively in mentoring efforts.

To encourage high-caliber minority undergraduates to continue their education, the diversity program includes merit based graduate fellowships. OSU Fellowships have been instrumental in the past in attracting highly qualified minority graduate students. Our current and past minority fellowship students indicate that the fellowship support was pivotal in their decisions to continue in graduate school. However, the availability of minority fellowships has dropped in the last two years due to recent court decisions on publicly funded racial incentives. Thus, we will replace the lost fellowships with GEF-funded fellowships in an effort to help promising undergraduates establish themselves in graduate school.

For promising advanced graduate students who are not on fellowships and are interested in academic positions, forgivable loans will be given to supplement assistantship appointments. These loans will enable students to make the long-term commitment required for a Ph.D. The loans are completely forgiven if students complete four years of service in an academic position following their Ph.D.

Faculty coupons will be given as the fourth part of the program to graduating students accepting faculty positions. The coupons will provide start-up funding that may be used to establish an academic program or research lab. The goal is to ensure that graduates are provided the resources to establish successful academic careers. The coupons provide valuable support to students in making the difficult transition to a faculty position. Combined together, the fellowships, loans and coupons are designed to overcome financial barriers to minority students pursuing academic careers.

The final component of the diversity program is an academic enrichment seminar for first-year minority graduates, which focuses on study and research skills. Making the transition from undergraduate to graduate study can be a difficult one, even if financial barriers are not a concern. To help ease that transition, the department currently provides tutoring for minority students who request such support. However, we recognize that individual tutoring by rotating tutors is not well suited to addressing fundamental differences in background and training between minority students and our majority student population. Individual tutoring also does not foster the interaction and peer mentoringopportunities that group learning environments can provide. Using a group seminar, we hope to create a cohesive community of minority students through which we can pass on the informal advice about strategies and skills that is so crucial to succeeding and excelling in graduate school.

The programs we are developing strategically target points in the educational pipeline where women and minorities drop out. However, more than their individual effects, we hope the programs will have a dramatic, infectious impact on the department's culture, making it one in which minorities are not only nurtured, but in which they feel they are vital integral members.

Dr. Miller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.