Faculty and graduates at Portland State’s Commencement.
Portland State is home to Oregon’s most diverse undergraduate student population in science, technology, engineering and math fields — but has a ways to go when it comes to recruiting and retaining a more diverse doctoral STEM student body.
PSU hopes to dramatically increase the diversity of its Ph.D. programs with the help of a two-year, $250,000 grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation aimed at improving the recruitment, retention and graduation of domestic Black, Indigenous and Latiné doctoral students in mathematics, statistics, physical sciences, engineering, and computer science.
The PSU team leading the project — Tong Zhang, assistant dean for inclusive innovation at Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science; Dara Shifrer, an associate professor of sociology; Joseph Bull, dean of Maseeh College; Todd Rosenstiel, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and Rossitza Wooster, dean of the Graduate School — sees it as a chance for PSU to diversify its programs, and by extension, the STEM workforce, and for students to get an education that will help them become highly skilled scientists and engineers in industry or academia.
“This grant will give us needed time and opportunities to reconsider how our resources, programming and community-building practices can better encourage broad-based STEM field diversification and support the advancement of BIPOC doctoral candidates,” said Rick Tankersley, vice president for Research and Graduate Studies. “We are thrilled to take on this work to continue to build out a research and educational enterprise powered by diverse perspectives.”
PSU was one of 10 institutions — and the only one in the Pacific Northwest — selected to participate in the Sloan Centers for Systemic Change initiative. The goal of the seed grant is to lay the groundwork for an implementation grant that would support continued systemic change work while also investing in individual “Sloan Scholar” scholarships for eligible students. The team aims to become a model for other urban research universities in building and sustaining diverse doctoral programs by developing and sharing best practices.
Ten doctoral programs across the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science are participating in the initiative: Applied Physics; Chemistry; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Computer Science; Earth, Environment and Society; Electrical and Computer Engineering; Engineering & Technology Management; Mathematical Sciences; Mechanical Engineering; and Systems Science.
The current makeup of these programs is overwhelmingly white and international students, according to institutional data. Black, Indigenous and Latiné students are often the only or one of a few students of color in their programs.
The grant will bring together a select group of faculty from across the programs to reconsider existing practices as well as develop new and expand existing strategies for recruiting and supporting Black, Indigenous and Latiné students in STEM graduate programs.
Building a pathway
Recruitment efforts will include strengthening the pathway from local community colleges and PSU’s undergraduate programs as well as visiting minority-serving institutions in nearby states and leveraging current programs such as PSU’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and its NSF-funded EAGLES Program — a collaboration with the Yakama Nation’s Heritage University that supports low-income and underrepresented students in STEM. Efforts will also build on the regional and national connections through PSU’s student chapters with the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS).
The project team will work to develop a comprehensive outreach plan and selection criteria for future Sloan Scholars that introduces a holistic admission review assessing students’ ability to contribute to PSU’s DEI mission and their academic potential outside of test scores and research experience. Ultimately, this will support PSU’s efforts to improve and centralize holistic graduate admission practices.
Indigenous students will be central in outreach and recruitment efforts. Bull, an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, says PSU is Oregon’s de facto tribal college with more than 800 students who identify as Native American or Alaska Native and remains committed to becoming the destination of choice for Indigenous students in STEM.
“There is a wealth of Indigenous knowledge and culture that is directly applicable to STEM disciplines, such as ecology, water resource management, wildfire management, community building, and more,” Bull said. “Oregon needs more diversity in its STEM workforce to meet industry needs and find the best solutions to our most pressing problems. PSU has a responsibility to excel in this area and we have the expertise to be a destination for Indigenous STEM.”
The project team will also develop and pilot an interdisciplinary cohort model with current doctoral students from all 10 programs. They will be provided with student support and community-building opportunities. Planned activities include an orientation and onboarding, professional development workshops and training that focus on a full range of career outcomes for Ph.D. graduates, mentoring from their peers and faculty external to their department through weekly meetings and programming with other campus offices such as the Multicultural Student Center and Student Health and Counseling.
The grant PIs say this represents an important opportunity for faculty and students to collaborate on interdisciplinary research and to standardize and centralize training in inclusive mentoring practices.
“We want PSU to be a place that diverse scholars choose to attend because we provide excellence in research, mentorship and holistic student supports,” Zhang said. “The additional resources in funds and knowledge and combining PSU’s smaller cohorts into interdisciplinary cohorts will foster collaboration across departments, increase capacity for DEI efforts, and provide Black, Indigenous and Latiné doctoral students with the community they need in a city and departments that are majority white.”
The grant PIs say the goal is to identify and remove entrenched biases and barriers at the institutional, college and departmental levels — and to do so will require a willingness and commitment from faculty to make change. Faculty from across the programs will receive targeted support for integrating diverse perspectives and content into their courses, centering equity and supporting student success.
“It is important, indeed essential, to deepen our commitment to shifting practices towards developing a truly inclusive culture of belonging across our departments and colleges,” Rosenstiel said. “Achieving true systemic change in STEM Ph.D. training will require new interventions and supports for our faculty, who are deeply committed to advancing this work at PSU.”
As part of the Sloan initiative, PSU will also participate in the University of Southern California’s Equity in Graduate Education Consortium, which provides professional development, coaching planning and other resources to support systemic change in STEM graduate education. PSU will be part of the “Admissions and Recruitment” track focused on inequities in typical graduate admissions, strategies for holistic review allowable under current law and ways to strengthen recruitment for diversity.