NSF Awards $2.5 Million to Rice

NSF Awards $2.5 Million to Rice

BY MICHAEL CINELLI
Rice News Staff
Nov. 12, 1998

Programs that encourage minority students to pursue advanced degrees in science, math and engineering helped Rice University earn a $2.5 million Minority Graduate Education (MGE) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Rice is the only university in the Southwest, and one of only eight institutions in the nation, to receive a portion of $20 million the NSF earmarked for launching its MGE program, which is aimed at significantly increasing the number of minority students receiving doctoral degrees in the sciences, mathematics and engineering.

The eight universities will each receive awards of up to $500,000 per year for five years depending on numbers of students served and factors related to project design.

In its application to the NSF, Rice highlighted the success of its computational and applied mathematics (CAAM) department to recruit and retain minority students in graduate degree programs. Principles learned in the CAAM program will provide a strong foundation for the university’s MGE effort. In addition, Rice proposed an experiment to develop and implement admissions criteria that more effectively predict success in graduate research programs and subsequent career positions.

“For many years, Texas was adversely affected by a drain of some of our best minority talent to graduate programs on the East and West coasts,” said Rice President Malcolm Gillis. “Having once left, these individuals tended strongly not to return to Texas. Rice, and other universities in Texas, have sought to counter this ‘brain drain’ through resourceful recruiting of budding minority scientists and engineers.

“This new NSF grant will materially strengthen our ability to attract and retain these valuable individuals.”

The Rice MGE project will operate under the direction of a leadership team, which includes Provost David Auston; Kathleen Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences; Sidney Burrus, dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering; Vice Provost Jordan Konisky; and Professor Richard Tapia, a member of the National Science Board.

Tapia’s outreach programs, funded through the NSF’s Center for Research on Parallel Computation, have been honored for their success.

“We are proud that we have won this highly competitive award from the NSF based largely on the things we have done here at Rice to address inclusiveness,” Tapia said. “We are very much aware at the national level that under-representation of minorities in these disciplines is of critical importance and endangers the health of the nation.”

The 1996 Hopwood case in Texas, which removed the use of race as a determining factor in admissions and financial aid decisions, presented another challenge that Rice accepted, Tapia added.

“Now because of Hopwood, we are prepared to implement a program that is successful in a post-affirmative action environment that universities around the nation can emulate.”

Included in the Rice MGE program is the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Graduate School at UW-Madison has played a leadership role in promoting and supporting programs intended to increase the number of minority students nationally who choose to pursue advanced degrees.

Matthews said, “This grant provides a unique opportunity to explore effective new mechanisms to recruit students into science and engineering. Graduate recruiting is a growing challenge across the country, and NSF has noted for some time the low level of minority students entering the sciences. This program is designed to facilitate development of effective means both to recruit and to retain students to completion of their doctoral degrees.”

The seven other universities receiving MGE grants are the Georgia Institute of Technology, Howard University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Florida, the University of Missouri at Columbia, the University of Michigan and the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras.