(NAME-MCE) Race Matters

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Black science students are more likely to stay in their field if they have
at least one black instructor, according to new study, which finds no
similar impact based on gender.

For better format and related stories, go to
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/11/race

33-page report can be downloaded at
http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/workingPapers/upload/cheri_wp129.pdf

Race Matters

Scott Jaschik   March 11, 2010  Inside Higher Ed


A constant theme of reports about math and science is that the United States
will have a large enough supply of scientists only if it does a better job
of attracting black and Latino scientists -- and not just relying on Asian
American, white and foreign talent. Many of these reports note that large
shares of black and Latino high school students don't receive the kind of
preparation they should in math and science.

A new study points to another factor: the role of black college instructors
in encouraging black science students to persist as science majors. The
study finds a statistically significant relationship between black students
who plan to be a science major having at least one black science instructor
as freshmen and then sticking to their plans. The finding could be
significant because many students (in particular members of
under-represented minority groups) who start off as science majors fail to
continue on that path -- so a change in retention of science majors could
have a major impact.


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At the same time, the study did not find a similar impact based on gender.

The study was released by Cornell University's Higher Education Research
Institute, which is sponsoring a conference this month on this research and
other studies focused on why some students are more likely than others to
persist as science and mathematics majors. The research on the impact of
race and gender was conducted by Joshua A. Price, a doctoral student at
Cornell who in the fall will join the economics faculty at the University of
Texas at Arlington.

Price analyzed data on more than 157,000 students who enrolled as first-time
freshmen in one of the 13 four-year universities in Ohio between 1998 and
2002 and who said that they intended to major in science, technology or
mathematics. He then examined whether those black students who had a black
instructor and female students who had a female instructor were more likely
to stick with their planned STEM major than those who did not. For purposes
of the study, "instructor" had to be the person -- typically but not always
a professor -- who was responsible for a course. A black teaching assistant
working for a white professor who ran a course would not count.

In doing his analysis, Price controlled for academic preparation using ACT
scores so that the students of various races and genders were compared to
those who shared their race and gender characteristics as well as their
level of academic preparation.

And here he found that black students who had at least one black science
instructor as freshmen were statistically more likely to continue on as STEM
majors than those who did not. (He tried to see if there was an additional
gain by having two math or science instructors taught by black instructors,
but there were too few black science instructors to allow a large enough
pool of students to have taken courses from two of them.)

On the issue of female students taking STEM courses from female instructors,
Price found that these students were slightly less likely than others to
continue as STEM majors, but the decline was so small that it was not
statistically significant. He found no impact on the persistence rates of
white students who took a course with a black instructor or male students
who took a course with a female instructor.

One other finding was that black STEM students were more likely than white
students to end up in STEM courses or sections led by black instructors,
again suggesting a key role for these black science professors. Price writes
in his study that he tried to control for this by factoring in the overall
odds of students ending up with black and white instructors.

In the paper, Price writes that while previous studies have found positive
educational benefits for minority students having same-race teachers in
elementary and secondary schools, this paper goes further than other
previous research in higher education. "These results suggest that policies
to increase the minority representation among faculty members might be an
effective means of increasing the representation of minorities who persist
and ultimately graduate within STEM fields," he writes.

In an interview, Price said that much more research was needed before trying
to base public policy on these or similar findings. He said that there are
some key questions that still need to be explored that could have an impact
on any policies. He said, for example, that the impact of having a black
instructor could come from a "role model effect" or from a mentoring effect.


If the impact is from role models, it would be essential to have more black
scientists around -- even if students aren't enrolled in their courses, they
might benefit from seeing black professors, he said. If, however, the impact
is from black instructors being better mentors of black students, that would
raise questions of whether all professors could be taught to be better
mentors to black students.

He also said that he was not sure his findings on women should be seen as
questioning the need to hire more female scientists. He said that some
recent research about the impact of instructor gender on students suggests
that the greatest impact of same-gender instructors is on high-achieving
female students, and he said his pool did not have enough differentiation to
see if there was more of an impact on this group of
students.