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Beatrice Terrien-Sommerville (l. to r.), GSAS associate dean, converses with Professor Manning Marable and Sharon Gamble, director of GSAS Office of Minority Affairs, at a reception for the 12th annual GSAS Summer Research Program for Students from Historically Underrepresented Groups.
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"The struggle for education has been absolutely essential to our survival as (members of underrepresented minorities)," said Dr. Manning Marable, Columbia University director of the Institute for African American Studies, as he addressed the current group of participants in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Summer Research Program for Students from Historically Underrepresented Groups.
The GSAS Office of Minority Affairs and The Leadership Alliance, the premiere academic consortium dedicated to assisting historically underrepresented students in preparing for, entering and finishing graduate school and Ph.D. programs, sponsor the summer research program. Columbia's summer 2000 program is hosting 16 students representing 10 colleges and universities (including Barnard and Columbia) from across the country for eight weeks of graduate-level research in the humanities, social, physical and life sciences.
"Over the past 11 years, GSAS has offered more than 200 undergraduate students from traditionally underrepresented groups the opportunity to conduct original research working closely with mentors from Columbia's and Barnard's distinguished faculty," said Sharon Gamble, director of the GSAS Office of Minority affairs. "Our goal is really three-fold - we want to acquaint these students with the kind of work that is done at Research I institutions, expose them to the merits of Columbia University and New York City and provide them with the opportunity to explore their personal options in terms of graduate study."
Since the summer of 1993, the Leadership Alliance has co-sponsored the Columbia University program under its Summer Research Early Identification Program (SR-EIP). Dr. Eduardo Macagno, GSAS dean, is Columbia's institutional coordinator to the Leadership Alliance and Gamble is the University's SR-EIP coordinator. This summer, Cynthia Duarte, from the GSAS Office of Minority Affairs, will assist as summer program coordinator.
From July 28th through 30th, Columbia's GSAS summer researchers will join with fellow undergraduate students from 23 additional Alliance-member institutions to present their research findings at the Leadership Alliance Annual National Symposium. Like the GSAS Summer Research Program, the SR-EIP mission is to aid more underrepresented minority students into graduate school, Ph.D. programs and, ultimately, research careers in academia, government and industry.
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Summer researchers met each other as well as some of their colleagues and professors at the GSAS Summer Research Program opening reception. (l. to r.) Students pictured are Kofi Boakye, an engineering major from Princeton; Loren Korneich, a student already working in Dean Eduardo Macagno's biology lab; Jamie Maldonado, a biology major from the University of Puerto Rico who will also work in that lab, and N'qyava Velasquez a psychology major from the University of Puerto Rico.
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"The (minority) movement for higher education has been a battle and is still a struggle," added Dr. Marable to the students at the reception. He reminded them that his generation of academicians were in many cases the first minority Ph.D. recipients from their respective institutions - as he was the first African American History Ph.D. recipient from the University of Maryland, College Park. He concluded, "to make diversity work in higher education, we must convince you young scholars to join us in academia. This summer, we want you to learn about your field, but we also want you to learn about the struggle."
The Leadership Alliance, the cosponsor of the GSAS summer research program, is a consortium of 28 institutions of higher education, including leading research and teaching colleges and universities, dedicated to improving the participation of underrepresented students in graduate education and Ph.D. programs. Its member institutions include Brooklyn College, Brown University, Claflin University, Clark Atlanta University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Delaware State University, Harvard University, Howard University, Hunter College, John Hopkins University, Montana State University-Bozeman, Morehouse College, Morgan State University, New York University, Prairie View A&M. University, Princeton University, Southern University at Baton Rouge, Spelman College, Stanford University, Tougaloo College, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, University of Pennsylvania, University of Puerto Rico, University of Texas at San Antonio, Xavier University of Louisiana and Yale University.
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