James F. Lubker - US grants

Iowa Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate

Project Summary

The Iowa Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, a group consisting of faculty in Science, Mathematics and Engineering and Technology (SMET) fields and administrators from all three Iowa State Regents Universities, requests five years of NSF funding under the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate program in partial support of a coordinated series of activities designed to recruit, retain and graduate a substantial number of underrepresented US minority graduate students in SME fields, as well as to change the culture at all three universities in order to guarantee real and permanent access to, through and from Alliance universities and programs.
Support is requested for five major program areas:

o Buildingpartnerships with minority-serving institutions
o An Alliance Summer Research Experience Program for Minority Undergraduates
o An Alliance Graduate Teaching Fellowship Program
o An Alliance Graduate Student Summer Workshop
o An Alliance Campus Awareness Program

Partnerships with minority-serving institutions will be built and maintained by a series of yearly conferences in each of three regions in which Alliance universities have been active in recruiting. Undergraduate students from minority-serving institutions will be introduced to the programs and culture of the Alliance universities through anAlliance Summer Research program.
Iowa State University and the University of Iowa will each provide support for five.41liance,Teaching Fellows during each year of the program. These five-year Teaching Fellowships will be made permanent at the end of the grant period. The University of Northern Iowa will provide support for two one-year Alliance Teaching Fellows through its teaching assistantship program. NSF will be asked to supplement these positions with an initial one-year traineeship. UNI Teaching Fellows will be encouraged to transfer to one of the other Alliance universities to complete work on the doctorate. A key role in all of this will be played by the Alliance Student Development Coordinator who, together with supporting student development staff at each of the three Alliance universities, will have primary responsibility for faculty and staff training; the development of programs and activities in and out of the classroom to enhance retention and the quest for excellence among students; and the development and administration of a system to assess the progress of the student development aspects of the program. The Director, together with faculty mentors and staff, will design and implement an introductory two-week Summer Workshop for incoming Teaching Fellows as well as academic-year programs designed to promote campus awareness, build community and ensure access. Career counseling and placement assistance will be provided for Fellows as they near the completion of the doctorate.
Through these programs and in cooperation with other Alliance University programs and other AGEP Alliance and AMP programs, a substantial number of minority students will complete the doctorate in SME fields at Alliance universities beginning at the end of year five of this project and continuing in subsequent years.