Jeanne Wright, allied health sciences, works with AIMS scholars (from top to bottom) Ashley Stephens, a freshman pre-med major from Toledo; Sheila Desai, a freshman biology major from Penfield, N.Y., and Sarah Smith, a freshman medical technology major from Pittsburgh.

New alliance helps women and minorities attain careers in math
and science

Bowling Green State University has joined a consortium of 15 Ohio universities and state agencies committed to increasing the number of minority students earning bachelor’s degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. With $3.5 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, the Ohio Science and Engineering Alliance also ultimately hopes to increase the number of minority students going on to graduate school in these fields.

The alliance is one of 31 NSF-funded Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation nationwide, named in honor of the congressman from Cleveland. These alliances have been among the most successful efforts nationally at increasing the enrollment of under-represented groups in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or the STEM disciplines, according to Carter Gilmer, a chemistry faculty member and director of the Academic Investment in Math and Science (AIMS) program at the University.

The NSF grant provides $700,000 annually for five years to support projects designed to enhance the recruitment, retention and graduation of minority students, and to encourage participants to attend graduate school. Funds will also be used to support such ventures as a statewide undergraduate research symposium and research-based internships at alliance institutions, as well as individual campus mentoring, tutoring and campus instruction.

Ohio State University President Karen Holbrook is principal investigator for the grant and will serve as chair of the alliance’s governing board. Gilmer is BGSU’s co- principal investigator. He worked with others across the state for about a year to design and write Ohio’s proposal to participate in the NSF program. Programs that demonstrate success may be eligible for additional funding, he said.

One chief avenue by which BGSU seeks to boost minority enrollment in STEM disciplines is through AIMS. The four-year program begins with an intense, five-week residential summer program primarily stressing mathematics before students matriculate to the University. They then attend special, graded AIMS seminars the first year, participate in undergraduate research, are mentored by faculty and may receive preparation for the Graduate Record Exam and the Medical College Admission Test. AIMS students also receive a $1,500 scholarship, which is renewable for three years with $500 incremental increases.

Through the alliance and the grant, AIMS students may also receive undergraduate research stipends and their faculty advisers may receive materials stipends. BGSU undergraduates may also apply for summer stipends, along with housing allowances.

“Our goal is twofold: to instill in them the desire to go on to terminal degrees and to help them achieve the background in educational excellence necessary to do that,” Gilmer said. “We want them to go on to work in academia and for NASA, IBM, Procter and Gamble—places where the targeted populations (minorities and women) have been under-represented in the past, particularly at the doctoral level.”

AIMS seeks to help its students “see how to do it, so it’s no longer just a pipe dream,” he added.
Now in its third year, Bowling Green’s AIMS program is showing success. This fall, seven students had perfect 4.0 GPAs, and 13 made the Dean’s List.

One of those Dean’s List students is Mario Baker, a sophomore from Cleveland. A physical therapy major, Baker lives in the Health Sciences Residential Community. He said the initial five-week summer session before his first semester was probably the most valuable part of an overall “very rewarding” experience.

“We had a different science class every day, along with math classes and computer science classes,” he said. “We were exposed to about every area of science that’s taught on campus. And on the weekends we had trips to businesses and hospitals to see how they use science and technology, so it gave us both the classroom and the actual workforce experience. For those people who didn’t know what they wanted to focus on, it helped them find out what they’d like to do.

“But it helped most with the transition from high school to being a freshman. We got to know the professors and what to expect from them, so when the semester started we were prepared.”

His feelings were echoed by freshman Gina Graham, a mathematics education major from Columbus. “AIMS is the reason I came to BGSU, she said. “It’s definitely a great program. It gave me the chance to get to know 19 people plus faculty before I began school here, and to get to know the campus, so it helped me adjust to going to college.”

She said the computer science class during the summer session was most helpful—it made my first computer science course so much easier.”

Among the 40 AIMS scholars, 70 percent are minorities (African American or Hispanic). Women students have heavily dominated each cohort. Of this year’s class of 20, six are men and 14 women.