Cottrell Scholar Program Generating Changes in U.S. Higher Education Program
Master’s-to-Ph.D. bridge programs encourage more to enter scientific workforce Cottrell Scholar Keivan Stassun, a Vanderbilt University professor of physics and astronomy, says his RCSA grant was instrumental in the launch of the Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program. The program has triggered a revolution in the way science doctoral programs at research institutions support underrepresented minority students. Stassun’s bridge program is now being emulated at Columbia University, MIT, Harvard and the University of Michigan.The American Physical Society (APS) will be promoting the bridging concept at other research institutions. In addition, Fisk University has become one of the top 10 producers of master’s degrees in physics among all U.S. citizens. In 2012 the Fisk-Vanderbilt program became the top at a research university to award doctoral degrees to underrepresented minorities in astronomy, physics, and materials science. It awards more than 10 times the number of underrepresented minority Ph.D.s in these disciplines than peer institutions. Fisk-Vanderbilt Bridge students have earned the nation's top graduate fellowships (e.g., NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, NASA Graduate Research Fellowship, and others), and some graduates have transferred to other highly ranked programs, including Yale and the University of Chicago. The University of Michigan has graduated its first crop of Ph.D.s in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, a program based on Stassun’s pioneering efforts. Stassun is the prime architect of the program, now in its eighth year.At Fisk and Vanderbilt, it has served 61 students (all U.S. citizens), 54 of whom are underrepresented minorities, 55% female, with a retention rate of 92%. The program has now received more than $30 million in support from federal funding agencies and from institutional investments from Vanderbilt and Fisk. He said that as the program was starting up, it benefited from the visibility and imprimatur provided by RCSA as a respected national organization for advancing the physical sciences. In addition, the RCAS Cottrell Scholar grant Stassun received provided flexibility of funding. “Most of the direct funding for the students in the program came from other sources,” he said. “But whether a student needed funding to pursue an external internship, or we needed to hire tutors for students struggling in a core graduate course, it was invaluable to have a source of unrestricted funding that provided the agility to rapidly fix problems.” Stassun said he also benefited from the national network of Cottrell Scholars, which provided helpful contacts with other young science faculty who were leading reform efforts around the country, and it also provided additional visibility for his efforts. “The ultimate measure of success, for me, is that what we are doing helps to promote the domestic science talent that we have” Stassun said.“Some of the people who leave our program with Ph.D.s are staying in academia, some of them are going into national labs, and some are going to work for DOD contractors.” His efforts, and those of others who are following his lead, come at a critical time in American science:- The Census Bureau has reported there will be no dominant racial majority in the United States in a few years.
- Concurrently, America will need a million more scientists in the next decade, according to a recent report by a presidential advisory panel.
- Roughly half of the nation’s science and math Ph.D.s produced each year do not stay in the U.S.
- The American Academies of Science and Engineering, as well as other organizations, have been warning for years now that the U.S. must greatly improve its science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education system if it hopes to compete in the 21st-century global economy.
