UNH Joins Alliance to Increase Minority Enrollment in Ph.D. Programs

The University of New Hampshire is part of a University of Massachusetts Amherst-led effort to increase the number of minority students pursuing PhDs in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Through a National Science Foundation grant to the Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, UNH will receive $650,000 during the next five years to aid in the recruitment, admission, retention, and preparation for future graduate and faculty positions of African American, Hispanic and Native American undergraduate students.

One initiative will be the expansion of current UNH initiatives such as the UNH-NASA Research and Discover summer internship program and the UNH McNair program to include more minority undergraduate seniors.

“We expect this will dovetail well with the existing Summer Program for Undergraduate Research at UMass,” said Karen Graham, director of UNH’s Joan and James Leitzel Center for Mathematics, Science and Engineering Education, which is coordinating UNH’s effort. “Students participating in these summer internships would experience the real world of field and laboratory research and data analysis, developing and giving a professional presentation to peers and mentors, as well as exposure to graduate programs at UNH and other Northeast Alliance Institutions.”

Additional UNH-based activities include coordinating faculty recruitment teams with the Graduate School and supporting the participation of graduate students from other alliance institutions in UNH’s unique College Teaching program.

Other alliance members are: Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers, University of Connecticut, University of Maine, University of Rhode Island and University of Vermont. Aspects of UNH’s effort will build on an existing partnership with Elizabeth City State University of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, one of the nation’s 105 historically black colleges and universities.