SBE Collaborative Research: Northwestern AGEP

ABSTRACT

Collaborative Proposals

SES-0549067

Lawrence Henschen

Northwestern University

SES-0548855

Charles Halaby

University of Wisconsin-Madison

SES- 0548999

Robert Kaufman

Ohio State

SES-054897

Evelynn Ellis

Pennsylvania State University

SES-0549106

Aquiles Iglesias

Temple University

SES-0549069

John Hansen

University of Chicago

SES-0548968

Deborah Richie

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

An alliance of seven universities composed of Northwestern University, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The University of Chicago, The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, The University of Wisconsin, and Temple University seek to broaden the participation of PhD students in the social and behavioral sciences by (1) engaging in coordinated activities across the seven universities, (2) increasing coordination of activities on each campus, (3) and studying the impact of various techniques on promoting diversity in graduate education. The goals include increasing the number of minority students enrolled, the establishment of permanent infrastructure on each campus to support diversity, the establishment of permanent programs on each campus and across the alliance to support diversity and a diverse population of graduate students, and the development of a publishable set of techniques and guidelines that can be used by any university and which we hope will lead to a national forum for the exchange of ideas and best practices for promoting diversity. The four key elements of the alliance include: 1) alliance-level activities (e.g., an annual student research conference and the creation of common recruiting materials and coordinated recruiting efforts; 2) recruitment through the implementation of an Alliance Visiting Scholars Program and coordination of recruiting efforts at major conferences, fairs and university visits; 3) increased retention of students by recruiting a cadre of social and behavioral professors and scholars who will provide instant, multi-level mentoring network and developing transition programs; and 4) increased activities and programs targeted at undergraduates in a wider range of universities and colleges to increase the pool of students. The number of universities in the alliance will allow the alliance to analyze the effectiveness of new strategies for broadening participation and the transference of existing techniques to new settings.

Broader Impact: The alliance will develop written materials that can be distributed to all universities in the US and could be the basis for a national exchange of ideas about alliances as a strategy to broaden participation in US institutions of higher learning.