AGEP: Colorado Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate

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The University of Colorado at Boulder will establish an enlarged Colorado Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate. This new Alliance will include original partner Colorado State University (CSU), and 2 new partners: the University Corporation of Atmospheric Research (UCAR), and the University of Colorado's urban Denver campus. The Alliance activities will be expanded to include an elite post-doctoral program that supports mentoring by the highest tier of award winning faculty, and a comprehensive professional evaluation to identify sustainable institutional factors that have the highest impact on promoting parity in graduate education and successful advancement to the professorate.Problem Statement and Motivation. To remain globally competitive in science and technology, US institutions must increase the participation of groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields, particularly at the doctoral level. In the coming decades underrepresented minorities will compose a growing fraction of the population, and if their representation within STEM fields does not increase, the total number of US STEM PhDs will decline substantially relative to the overall U.S. population. The Colorado AGEP has developed the following goals to address these national concerns:. To translate the significant increases in minority STEM PhD enrollment realized during the last project period, into corresponding increases in PhD conferrals, such that the number of PhDs awarded increases from an average of 12 per year to an average of 24 per year over the next 5 years . To increase minority STEM PhD enrollment by 67%, from the current 111 students to 185 students . To develop stable cohorts of minority STEM doctoral students with retention rates comparable to their majority counterparts, and scholars that continue into the professoriate with tenure rates comparable to their majority counterparts . To provide targeted professional development opportunities, which increase the competitiveness of recent PhD recipients and postdoctoral fellows for careers in academe . To institutionalize a value added promotion and tenure credit for faculty that successfully mentor underrepresented minority graduate students through a PhD or postdoctoral fellowship . To change institutional cultures and establish sustainable diversity programs that do not solely depend upon dedicated federal grant support by 2015 At Colorado Alliance universities, the value-added components to AGEP already in place are: . Proactive faculty support system that recruits and retains underrepresented PhD students and postdoctoral fellows; . Strong commitment to AGEP's goals at the highest administrative levels at each institution; and . Significant financial support from Alliance institutions. Together, the Colorado Alliance institutions have committed $1 million per year to support AGEP activities. The intellectual merit of this proposal lies in its comprehensive faculty-driven effort to seamlessly transfer students through doctoral education and career placement. The net gain will be 10 new, highly competitively trained postdoctoral fellows that will enter the professorate, and 120 new underrepresented PhD graduates. The broader impacts of this proposal lie in its potential to serve as a national model for the integration of a broad array of previously independent diversity programs, which will catalyze the institutionalization of AGEP's efforts, and significantly contribute to the diversity of the professoriate for generations.