I can give you a personal example. A couple of years ago I was lead author on a Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need proposal. I quoted some of the same data you did on an early chart, in terms of African American Ph.D.s per year in chemistry. One of the referees wrote back that these data are surely incorrect and the number of students cannot be that small.

Jessica Arkin, Ventures in Education: We received permission to provide you with information about the Ventures Scholars Program. The Ventures Scholars Program identifies high-achieving high school and undergraduate students from traditionally underrerpresented groups and provides them with recognition and information that will increase their chances of entering careers in medicine and the allied health professions, science, engineering, and mathematics. This is accomplished by partnering with a consortium of undergraduate and professional institutions nationwide and providing opportunities for these institutions to recruit, enroll, and prepare targeted students for these professions. We work closely with the College Board to target these students based on preliminary scholastic assessment test scores and GPAs.

Recently, we started working with our undergraduate Ventures Scholars who were seeking to go into graduate programs. If you are interested in obtaining a database of these students, please call us at 1-800-94-SMART, extension 103.

C. Reynold Verret, Clark Atlanta University: What is being done to replicate these efforts in the other departments in our schools?

Isiah M. Warner: That is part of my charge in my new position. The chancellor and I were talking. He said, if we had sat down and talked ten years ago about being the nation’s leading producer of Ph.D.s in some area, chemistry for sure would never have been the area we picked. If we can do it in chemistry, we can do it in any area. One of the charges of my new position is to try to create the same kind of environment in other graduate programs.