January-February 2007

The lack of diversity in graduate programs is a national crisis. A May 2005 report by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation indicated that, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up 32 percent of all U.S. citizens in the normal age range of Ph.D. candidates, only seven percent of all doctoral recipients are black or Latino.

In the words of Robert Weisbuch, the foundation’s president, “The numbers make it clear: We still have a great expertise gap in the United States. Our next generation of college students will include dramatically more students of color, but their teachers will remain overwhelmingly white.”

One thing is evident: Traditional methods of recruiting minorities into graduate programs just aren’t working well enough. Universities often try to remedy this situation by tinkering with recruitment strategies. But this neglects a major cause of the problem: Undergraduates are not being given sufficient opportunities to explore graduate study in ways that resonate with their personal and intellectual interests and commitments. This may be particularly important for minority students, whose career choices often are driven by a desire to give back to their communities.

Some argue that internships and career counseling meet this need. But these often come too late in the curriculum and are viewed by many students and professors as non-academic and secondary to scholarship and study. Maybe we need to start thinking outside the box. Why should education be limited to textbooks and lectures? Why must experiential learning and career exploration be viewed as less intellectual than academic knowledge?

As an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to connect my personal, intellectual, and career interests. Through the University of Texas at Austin’s Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) initiative, I was given the chance to be a “citizen-scholar”—to own my education and discover how to leverage knowledge for social good. By sharing my experience, I hope to stimulate changes in undergraduate education elsewhere that will result in more opportunities like the one I had—opportunities that will increase both quality and diversity in higher education.

When I was four years old, my parents decided to leave our home country, Peru, amidst overwhelming turmoil caused by the Shining Path Maoist guerrillas. Although it was a painful sacrifice on their part, they wanted their three daughters to succeed in the United States, this “land of opportunity.”

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