Feature Story

September 27, 2007

Program Provides Blueprint for Recruiting Minorities to Science and Engineering

From National Science Foundation:

The Model Institutions for Excellence Program (MIE) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has developed a body of work over the past 11 years demonstrating successful strategies for recruiting underrepresented minority students to science and engineering fields and supporting their successful completion of science degrees.

Their collective results show that underrepresented minority students' enrolling in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) coursework increased at a higher rate than total STEM enrollment.

"We now have the institutional answer to the question of how to recruit these students, support their needs, provide curriculum and institutional support and help them plan for their post-undergraduate lives."

Among the keys to the MIE program's success are helping to bridge the transition from high school to college through training of elementary, middle school and high school teachers and offering summer orientation programs.

Finally, students receive assistance for the future, whether it encompasses graduate study or career, through help with the graduate school admissions process, information on trends in STEM fields, and job placement services.

"IHEP is making a pilot effort to replicate what the MIEs have done, using the MIEs as consultants and learning from their experience," says Jamie P. Merisotis, IHEP president.

MIE also funded the creation of the Science Diversity Center (http://sciencediversitycenter.org/), The center is a Web-based comprehensive one-stop STEM educational resource tool designed to help federal agencies that fund STEM education initiatives share timely program and project information in a user-friendly format with students and others; share information on strategies that address the nation's STEM workforce needs, and foster increased participation in STEM fields by individuals from groups currently underrepresented in STEM.

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