Retention

AGEP will impact the early academic experience of URM graduate students and improve their retention by improving faculty mentoring, creating community networks, and enhancing students’ skills for coping with academic hurdles such as the qualifying exam.

Improving Faculty Mentoring —  UC AGEP II will help faculty develop the skills necessary to be good mentors.  Although proper mentoring is important to every graduate student, it is particularly germane to the retention of graduate students from underrepresented groups. In UC AGEP II, several campuses will offer workshops to assist faculty in becoming more effective mentors. 

UC AGEP II has the opportunity to help establish an inclusive community “from the ground up” at its newest campus, UC Merced.  Merced hopes to inculcate its founding faculty, prior to the arrival of the first full cohort of students in the fall of 2005, into a culture that values strong mentoring skills.  Faculty mentoring will be particularly important at this campus, because its graduate education will be organized around multidisciplinary groups that transcend the boundaries of its Schools and may thus lie outside the realm of typical support services that bolster discipline-based graduate programs.  Much of the responsibility for student support and mentoring must become the domain of Merced’s faculty and researchers. In addition, because of Merced’s location in the San Joaquin Valley, an area of California with no one majority ethnic group, and low rates of educational attainment, Merced is expected to attract a significant population of students who are both first generation college students and members of groups underrepresented in higher education as either students or faculty members. 

UC AGEP II at Merced will accomplish two objectives: 1) provide its faculty and staff with an in-depth understanding of the issues and impediments that different groups of minority students face in establishing successful careers as graduate students and faculty members, and 2) provide tools needed by faculty and staff to develop effective mentoring skills that will positively impact student success.

The first component of this plan will be to initiate an annual Diversity Round Table sponsored by the Chancellor and the Executive Vice Chancellor.  This Round Table will bring together experts who are knowledgeable of the impediments to diversity in the professoriate and the role that good mentorship can play in overcoming these.  These individuals will be respected researchers who are representative of successful minority recruitment and retention in graduate education and in the professoriate. The second component will be to build on the Diversity Round Table through training workshops that will help Merced’s founding faculty and staff develop successful mentoring skills. An outside facilitator, experienced in research and academic mentoring, will be hired to hold tutorials with Merced founding faculty and to develop case studies that can be a source of ongoing training.

Creating Community Networks and Building Skills —  UC AGEP II will provide structured opportunities for students to develop collegial networks and skills early in their career.  Retention efforts build upon the UC Irvine Phase I program, and its success in increasing rates of URM retention in STEM fields.  These efforts began with a summer program for entering STEM graduate students and provided continuing opportunities for students to develop supportive networks and training in academic and professional skills.  Prior to the Phase I program, UCI had retention rates for minority students in STEM disciplines drastically below that of their peers: 29% lower in 1998 and 11% lower in 1999.  In fall 2000, only one year into its Phase I program, UCI’s retention rate for URM students in STEM doctoral programs surpassed that of all other students in STEM doctoral programs (100% vs. 71%) and has continued to be roughly equivalent to or better than retention rate of all other STEM doctoral students at UCI since then.

Seven campuses will implement retention programs that have as key components summer enrichment opportunities that segue into professional development and networking activities during the academic year.  The majority of these programs will focus on: 1) getting URM students physically situated on campus prior to the return of all graduate students: 2) informing them about academic expectations and available campus resources; 3) helping them get acquainted with their fellow colleagues; and 4) training them in key skills while beginning their research under the mentorship of a faculty member.  The summer programs for graduate students will emphasize not only the acquisition of resource information critical for success in an academic career, but also serve to promote the formation of an intellectual community and a mutual support cohort in which students help one another during their graduate careers and beyond.  Students will participate in workshops including “Funding Your Graduate Education,” “Advanced Library Research Skills,” “Scientific Writing,” “Taking the Qualifying Exam” and “Selecting a Faculty Mentor.”  In addition, students gain an advantage by assimilating to their new environment through summer research lab assignments. 

The expected outcome is to nurture and support URM students, provide coping skills, and increase preparedness while defusing the anxiety associated with starting graduate school.  This will increase retention, self-confidence and success in the students’ chosen fields.

Continuing Graduate Student — AGEP will support continuing URM graduate students through programs that improve their professional and academic skills, and prepare them for postdoctoral positions and the academic job market. 

After assisting URM students in becoming well-established in their graduate programs, UC AGEP II will implement a common core of co-curricular skill building workshops, opportunities for networking and intellectual exchange and administrative support.  Each program will be tailored to each individual campus environment, addressing concerns particular to the campus and/or building upon successful existing local programs.  Examples of activities include: