Tapia Discusses Future of Representation at Rice After Affirmative Action Decision

Tapia Discusses Future of Representation at Rice After Affirmative Action Decision

Photo caption: Richard Tapia

By Lia Unrau
Rice News Staff

Although the death of affirmative action is upon us,
there are things we should continue to do to work toward a
balance of representation, said Richard Tapia, the Noah
Harding Professor of Computational and Applied
Mathematics.

Tapia spoke about “Affirmative Action: What have we
learned, what must we do?”, during a talk on campus April
25.

Calling on educators to rework how students are
evaluated in college admissions and all levels of
education, Tapia said, “We have learned that we are
addicted to tests. We can’t reject a higher score for a
lesser one. We fear an inferior student.”

He criticized current criteria for failing to address
students’ creativity and for rewarding only those students
who excel early in life.

Addressing the “crisis” in K-12 schools, Tapia said we
must learn to value the activities, confidence and self-esteem of students and nurture successes along the way,
things that minority schools are much better at than
majority schools, he said. Majority schools excel in
access and preparation, areas where minority schools need
improvement.

Rice has had notable successes in showing some
flexibility in evaluating college entrance exams, minority
undergraduate retention, and achieving a successful,
diverse program in the computational and applied
mathematics department, Tapia said.

On the other hand, he said minorities who enter Rice
with an interest in majoring in science, engineering and
math usually end up in other areas. He said minority
graduate students often enter the Ph.D. program but leave
with a master’s degree.

Tapia said what we have learned is that any sensitive
individual can help a minority, faculty culture is hard to
change, the diversity of Houston is an asset to promoting
the diversity of Rice and the nation is not served by”buying” diversity at our institutions.

“We know what to do, but it is not in alignment with
the traditional reward system that is in place in our
society,” he said.

Tapia called for leadership from research institutions
and urged educators to provide a smooth transition from
minority institutions to majority institutions.

“The administration must communicate the mission
effectively to the departments and provide motivation,
guidance, understanding and then reward them for
appropriate change,” he said.