Rice University
PA-7: Support for Future Faculty Diversity

Rice participates in a number of programs that aim to increase diversity in higher education faculty by providing assistance to grad school applicants. The following is a summary of these programs: (1) Faculty Recruitment and Development working group: The Office of Diversity and Inclusion has a working group dedicated to faculty recruitment and development. The current goals of this group are to continue training sessions for search committee chairs and members, host an annual workshop (The Future Faculty Workshop) for under-represented postdoctoral scholars and late stage PhD students, partner with Northeastern University to update, upgrade and expand Rice’s National Database of Under-Represented Postdoctoral Scholars and Late State PhD students, and to host lunch discussions for under-represented Rice faculty. During the 2012-2013 academic year, the Faculty Recruitment and Development working group met all four of these goals. (2) Rice University’s NSF ADVANCE: “The Rice University NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation for Faculty Diversity project is committed to increasing the number of women in science and engineering at Rice University, with a particular focus on the Schools of Natural Science and Engineering. The program is designed to capitalize on the strong commitment to gender equity at Rice University, and to create new insights into the features of the academy that impede the inclusion and progress of women and minorities more generally in the professoriate. The hope of the program is that more women and underrepresented minorities will be inspired to join the ranks of academe and to use their own skills to advance into important leadership roles based on the activities of this program.” http://www.advance.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=81 (3) The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program (MMUFP): At Rice University, the fundamental objective of MMUFP is to increase the number of minority students, and others with a demonstrated commitment to eradicating racial disparities, who will pursue PhDs in core fields in the arts and sciences. The program aims to reduce the serious underrepresentation on university faculties of people of certain minority groups, as well as to address the attendant educational consequences of these disparities. (4) The National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science (GEM): GEM’s mission statement is to “enhance the value of the nation’s human capital by increasing the participation of underrepresented groups (African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanic Americans) at the master’s and doctoral levels in engineering and science. (5) Project 1000: This initiative helps Latino students applying for graduate schools by taking care of application fees and connecting prospective grad students with a liaison at each of the graduate programs under consideration. (6) Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers (IRT): IRT seeks to bring more ethnic and racial diversity to the teaching profession by helping talented college students interested in a career in education through the graduate school application process.” (7) Rice-Houston Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (Rice-Houston AGEP): Rice University is one of many Texas universities that comprise the Rice-Houston Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (Rice-Houston AGEP) Program. Situated in one of the nation's largest, most culturally diverse cities, the Rice-Houston AGEP unites many of the city's research and teaching universities and community colleges in the common mission of significantly increasing the number of underrepresented minority students earning the Ph.D. and positioning them to become leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.