Keeping the Pipeline Full

Alissa D. Gardenhire had no intention of going to graduate school when she was an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

But when the university hired a black professor in her environmental studies department, she was inspired. Today, Gardenhire is a sixth-year graduate student in urban planning at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

University administrators, faculty and students alike clamor for greater diversity among college professors, but hiring more members of minority groups is only part of the problem.

Before colleges and universities can create diverse faculties, they need a diverse pool of applicants to choose from.

In university-speak, it's the "pipeline problem."

With minority applications to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) down slightly in recent years, officials say they will continue to recruit aggressively for he diverse faces that will be the professors of the future.

And Harvard--like all institutions of higher learning across the nation--needs those diverse faces.

In the upper echelons of its 10 schools, Harvard has had only one full fledged dean that is a member of a minority group, Venkatesh Narayanamurti, dean of the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

High level University officials--like deans of individual schools--are almost always chosen from senior faculty. Without tenured minority professors, there can't be minorities in the most prominent University positions.

But before you're a professor, you have to get through graduate school. And that's where GSAS comes in.

Keeping the Pipeline Full

GSAS has watched the percentage of its applications from US targeted minorities decline ever so slightly in recent years, from about 6 percent to 5 percent, according to Russell E. Berg, dean of admissions and financial aid for GSAS.

And GSAS continues to work hard to get minority students to apply to Harvard.

They send current students and administrators to specific universities, to meet potential applicants, advertise the school and play up the Harvard experience.

Berg says that his office targets historically black colleges as well as large state universities.

"Getting faculty members out to do that type of recruiting is very important too," says Garth O. McCavana, assistant dean for student affairs in GSAS.

McCavana says that this fall Berg and a faculty member from the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences went to the University of Maryland this fall to recruit minority students in engineering.

Students say the school's efforts pay off.

Gardenhire, a sixth year graduate student in urban planning, says that meeting a Harvard representative , "Made a big difference in my own decidion to come [here]."

Gardenhire was living in Virginia seven years ago when she talked with Stephanie A. Parsons, coordinator for minority recruitment for GSAS about Harvard.

Parsons gave her an application fee waver and "made it as easy as possible to apply," Gardenhire says. "Meeting someone gave it a human face, because Harvard is a big name."

Once students are accepted to GSAS, the University pays for their airfare to Cambridge so that they can check out the campus and meet faculty and students.

The DuBois Society

GSAS officials say they emphasize all of Harvard's selling points--world class faculty, great research facilities, and superior libraries--when they are out and about talking to potential minority applicants.

"There are resources here that may not be available at other schools," Berg says. "And there's the opportunity to teach the best undergraduates in the country."

But recruiters also emphasize the strength of the minority community at Harvard, which is rooted, administrators say, in the W.E. B. Du Bois Society.

The society provides an academic and social forum for GSAS minority students and meets with accepted students when they visit the campus courtesy of the University.

Gardenhire, a member of the society's steering committee, says that besides the group's monthly "mixers" in Dudley house, they have also organized ongoing research forums where graduate students at various points in their studies gather over dinner and then present their research.

The GSAS Experience

Students say that in general, life as a minority in GSAS is pretty good.

"In a lot of ways, Harvard is race neutral, at least that's been my experience," Gardenhire says. "I had a few bad experiences when I first came, of professors being inappropriate. But I set them straight and I don't work with those people. Race hasn't affected my ability to learn."

Gardenhire emphasizes that students' experiences vary from department to department, as a student spends the majority of their time working in their academic field.

Ezell Lundy, a third year graduate student in sociology, agrees and says that he feels very secure in his department.

"There's been ample support where you don't feel you're at a disadvantage because you are an ethnic minority," he says. "Yes, I hear where students don't get adequate support, but that's not because they are an ethnic minority."

Though Lundy says there is always room for the improvement of diversity on campus and that GSAS should continue their heavy recruiting efforts, he feels that minority representation of campus is "adequate."

"There are a reasonable number of communities of color on campus," he says.

But Gardenhire says that she would like to see more minority professors in departments outside of ethnic studies. In her six years at Harvard, she says, she has taken just one course from a black professor.

"We should be encouraging more people from undergraduates on," she says.

The World's University

Despite all the recruiting efforts, applications from members of minority groups have dropped recently, a trend that goes beyond Harvard, officials say.

"It's a similar situation at graduate schools everywhere--it's pretty much a nationwide trend," McCavana says.

He says he thinks that the number of applications from minority students has gone down in recent years because the economy is so strong.

"Sometimes graduate school is a way station for students--somewhere to go to when they don't have a job," he says. "The job market is so good, people are thinking twice about graduate school."

But as fewer U.S. students apply to graduate school, the number of international students enrolling at GSAS is far greater than the number of U.S. targeted minorites.

In the fall of 1998, 393 international students enrolled in GSAS, compared to 213 blacks and Hispanics.

"This may simply reflect the belief around the world, the confidence, in the value of a U.S. Ph.D.," Berg says.

McCavana says his office is seeing an increase in applications from the People's Republic of China.

"It's one of the largest international groups," he says.

Encouraging the Scholars of the Future

GSAS officials say they will continue their aggressive recruitment of minorities.

And McCavana says that he would like Harvard to adopt other school's strategy of having a summer program specifically for minorities.

"Students come while they are in college or high school, not with the goal of necessarily attracting students to that school, but grad school in general," he says.

Without such outreach efforts, they say, potential academic stars who might not have otherwise thought of Harvard may fall through the cracks.

"We want to be assured that this institution is taking full advantage of human resources," Berg says. "We want to make sure we are attracting the very best students."