How Undergraduate Institutions Can Diversify the Graduate Student Body

Despite recent gains in minority enrollments and the creation of outreach programs at many graduate schools, the student body in graduate programs is overwhelmingly white. And in many fields, graduate programs worry about their inability to attract American applicants. A growing number of experts believe that while graduate admissions efforts are important, much of the work to diversify the graduate student body must start in undergraduate programs.

On Wednesday, October 21, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Richard Cherwitz will lead a discussion on how undergraduate programs need to change to encourage more of their minority students (and more of their students generally) to consider graduate school and faculty careers. Cherwitz is founder and director of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium (IE) in the Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. One of IE’s initiatives is the Pre Grad School Internship, which helps undergraduates work closely with graduate students and faculty members, and is credited with encouraging many to pursue graduate study.

Among the topics Mr. Cherwitz will discuss:

• An overview of the current demographics of graduate school.
• Why affirmative action efforts by graduate schools can only be part of a solution, and won’t by themselves be effective.
• Why the undergraduate curriculum needs to change to attract more students to grad school..
• How the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium works, and how you can apply its principles to your college.
• The role of academic advisors and of mentors.
• The one-hour program will feature lots of time for questions and answers – and the program is designed for a wide range of institutions.

Mr. Cherwitz will present for 30 minutes and take questions for 30 minutes. The entire program will last one hour.

The program is ideal for:

•Academic advising
• Department chairs and undergraduate coordinators
• Diversity and minority student services officials
• Undergraduate deans
• Graduate school deans and admissions officers

This audio conference, "How Undergraduate Institutions Can Diversify the Graduate Student Body," costs $199 for a single telephone line; listen yourself or with a group around a conference table. Register early -- through Monday, October 5 -- and the cost is only $149. Upon registering, you'll be e-mailed information about how to dial in. The day before the conference, we'll send you a PowerPoint that you can use to follow along with the presentation. This is an audio-only conference; you will not need to be connected to the Internet to participate.

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About the presenters:

Richard Cherwitz is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies and in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing, and a fellow at the Institute for Innovation, Creativity & Capital at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the founder and director of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium in UT’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. He is the author of two books and more than 100 journal articles, book chapters, reviews, and papers. Among the many awards he has received: the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Innovation Award, the Examples of Excelencia Award (Excelencia in Education), the National Speakers Association Outstanding Professor Award, the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Outstanding Contributions to Graduate Education Award, the Texas Blazers Faculty Excellence Award and the Ernest A. Lynton Award for Faculty Professional Service & Academic Outreach (New England Resource Center for Higher Education).

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