The study is framed by two questions:1. What contributed to the successful completion of a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Ph.D. by minority graduate students at the University of California between 1980 and 1990?2. Did their subsequent careers after the Ph.D. correspond to their training and aspirations?&nbsp;Answering these entailed learning about participants’ entire lives from birth to the present, and studying individuals of all ethnic groups to look for similarities and differences in background, experiences, educational path, and careers. 158 Ph.D.s were interviewed: 33 African Americans, 35 Asian Americans, 24 Chicanos, 13 Hispanics, 5 Native Americans, 52 European Americans. The latter were matched to minority students from the same lab, with the same advisor, and similar degree year. Interviews averaged between two and three hours and used a standard questionnaire.Funding: Spencer Foundation Major Grant Program, Grant No. 200000265 P.I. Anne MacLachlan [Initially with Arnie Leiman, Professor and CSHE Director]. May 1, 2000–May, 2004. UC President’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Initiative Grant, June 1, 1998–May 30, 1999

Maclachlan, Anne

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UC BerkeleyCenter for Studies in Higher Education: Special Reports and Online         BooksTitleA Longitudinal Study of Minority Ph.D.s from 1980-1990: Progress and Outcomes in Science and Engineering at the University of California during Graduate School and Professional Life (2006).Permalinkhttps://escholarship.org/uc/item/0gz2x52cAuthorMaclachlan, AnnePublication Date2006eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital LibraryUniversity of CaliforniaFINAL REPORT TO THE SPENCER FOUNDATION GRANT NO. 200000265ANNE J. MACLACHLANCENTER FOR STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION, UC BERKELEYA Longitudinal Study of Minority Ph.D.s from 1980-1990: Progress and Outcomes in Science and Engineering at theUniversity of California during Graduate School and Professional LifeFOCUS OF THE RESEARCHThe study is framed by two questions:1. What contributed to the successful completion of a Science, Technology, Engineering, andMathematics (STEM) Ph.D. by minority graduate students at the University of Californiabetween 1980 and 1990?2. Did their subsequent careers after the Ph.D. correspond to their training and aspirations?Answering these questions entailed learning about participants’ entire lives from birth to thepresent, and studying individuals of all ethnic groups to look for similarities and differences inbackground, experiences, educational path, and careers. 158 Ph.D.s were interviewed: 33African Americans, 35 Asian Americans, 24 Chicanos, 13 Hispanics, 5 Native Americans, 52European Americans. The latter were matched to minority students from the same lab, with thesame advisor, and similar degree year. Interviews averaged between two and three hours andused a standard questionnaire.FINDINGSI. Life before graduate school1. Family support and stability contributed substantially to student success without respect toparents’ educational level. Almost all study participants had both parents present when inelementary and secondary school.2. Asian Americans had the most educated parents: 60% hold at least one college degree;Chicanos had the least educated parents: 70% hold a high school diploma or less.3. For many study participants from poor families with relatively uneducated parents,intervention by a teacher, school counselor, or neighbor was decisive in either putting orretaining the pupil on track for academic achievement.4. Teachers and school counselors were critical to putting these pupils on the college track byinforming them about what it meant to go to college, taking them to college campuses, orrecommending them for summer science programs, and directing them to financial aid.5. While in secondary school, members of all ethnic groups participated in honors classes,special science programs, or graduated valedictorian at roughly the same rate.6. Once in college usually other than research universities, around 50% of African American,Chicano, and white students participated in scientific research through summer programs, paidemployment, or in special courses. An advanced degree in science became their goal, oftenreplacing the goal of an M.D. degree.7. Only 9 students from all ethnic groups graduated with an overall G.P.A. under 3.0; 8 of thesecompleted Master’s degrees before applying to a doctoral program.Anne J. MacLachlan — Spencer Report-2-II. Life in Graduate School1. Study participants entered graduate programs with very different educational backgrounds:93% of Asian American students came to the University of California (UC) from ResearchInstitutions, while only 58% Chicanos, and 46% Blacks did. African Americans who hadattended HBCUs had a difficult time adjusting to a large and impersonal white place like UCBerkeley.2. Twenty-seven of 158 graduates (17%) reported not understanding graduate schoolexpectations in their first year and beyond.3. Members of all ethnic groups usually rated themselves as equal or good to very good incomparison with other members of their first year cohort, but in every group was a minority whothought they were inadequately prepared, did not have a research topic, or felt themselvesinadequate in other ways.4. Yet, students of all ethnic groups succeeded in their first year through their own diligence,drawing on an existing personal support systems, or creating such a system at their UC withpeers and faculty.5. Academic problems were experienced by a limited number of graduates of all ethnic groupsand at different times through the Ph.D. program.6. Fellowships provided by affirmative action status substantially assisted in timely andsuccessful degree completion for the recipients.7. Prestigious fellowships (NSF, NIH, Ford, IBM) were held by similar percentages of everyethnic group.8. While most former students gave their dissertation advisors a high rating overall, the sameadvisors were found deficient in professional development training: especially in grant writingand in helping advisees learn to teach, write articles, network, and present papers.9. Racism was a daily experience of most African Americans in the study, despite their academicsuccess. Racism was experienced less by Chicanos, but Chicanas and Hispanic womenexperienced both racism and sexism from time to time. Sexism was also experienced by somewhite and Asian women. Fellow students were more likely to engage in such behaviors thanfaculty, although a few faculty were considered strongly racist.10. Success in graduate school was attributed generally to a combination of great support fromfamily, spouses or friends, a passion for science, an appreciation one’s own competence,developing a positive relationship with at least one faculty member, and a clear plan aboutgetting through graduate school.III. Life After Graduate School1. Postdoctoral positions lasting from 1 to 6 years were held by 92 (58%) new Ph.D.s primarilyin the life sciences and chemistry. Due to an absence of advising, some of these positions wereinappropriate, but the majority were successful in launching careers.2. Forty-one of the 158 (26%) never worked in an academic position and are now industrialresearchers, entrepreneurs, government researchers / administrators, lawyers, or non-profitemployees.3. The majority (98, or 62%) are professors teaching at a spectrum of institutions including manyresearch universities. Their reasons for selecting a particular college or university position areAnne J. MacLachlan — Spencer Report-3-complex: the ability to continue to do good science is major, but serving one’s community (7teach at an HBCU), promoting diversity and supporting first generation students, geographicallocation, and having time for family life are also factors in the decision. Most are reasonablysatisfied with their current positions, although a small number needed several job changes to finda compatible position.4. A large number (31, or 20%) of study participants made career choices which enabled them tostay in the San Francisco Bay Area.5. Almost all in the study believe their careers correspond to their training and aspirations. Theexceptions accept that it was their own decision to, say, turn down employment at a researchuniversity or stay in a particular area for family or community reasons. A few have had a verydifficult time before arriving at their present positions.6. But in terms of what each wants from life, almost all consider themselves successful.7. Overt racism was uncommon in the careers of the minority scientists, but a pervasive sense ofbeing judged differently or having to work harder than whites persists for many. Because of theineffability of racism, a large number feel that it could have affected their careers, but are notcertain.IMPORTANCE OF THE FINDINGSThis is the first study of the lives of Ph.D. scientists and engineers of many ethnicities educatedat the same time, in the same type of university and based on systematically collectedautobiographical data directly from the participants. It is also a collective biography of aparticular generation successfully making its way through the educational system at the time ofthe Civil Rights Movement. It gives voice to the particular experience of each participant andrecords their own view of their life.It is also the first study to focus on the success of ethnic minorities in STEM graduateprograms and careers and to document experience in such a way that both deficits and benefitsof graduate education are apparent. Some graduate school experiences are a sharp indictment ofthe system. But nearly all of the interviewees’ experiences suggest that graduate education isinefficient in transmitting skills necessary for professional development, and too oftenidiosyncratic and unreliable in terms of mentoring and career advising. A longer time to degreeis a result. At the end few were disappointed with the intellectual content of their programs, butmany were with the structure in which it was transmitted. Extensive advice for new graduatestudents from the study participants is provided along with their recommendations for reforminggraduate education. This study also contributes detailed knowledge about career paths in scienceand how they have been shaped.When published as a book, it is meant to be broadly read by college students, particularlystudents of color, as a means of inspiring them to pursue a professional career by seeing howothers like them have done it. It is also a book to be read by science and engineering faculty andgraduate school deans to learn about issues of graduate education that are in their power to fix.Finally this is a book for specialists of diversity and higher education as it shows how highereducation could be made more inclusive and more effective.Anne J. MacLachlan — Spencer Report-4-FUTURE RESEARCHThis study has been my major focus for many years. The richness of the material has enabled meto write separate articles on aspects of the population under study. Quite a number of studyparticipants attended community college, and it is now emerging that for a great many firstgeneration students, the community college begins the pathway to the doctorate in STEM.Emerging from this is my next study on how URM students start to take the classes in aCalifornian community college (CCC) which will enable them to transfer to a four yearinstitution. Who is served by remedial math classes at a community college and does completionof such courses put students on the science track? Why are only 15 CCCs responsible for themajority of transfer students to CSU and UC in STEM, and why are there so few URMs amongthese transfers? Given the diversity of the State and the overwhelming contribution of STEMdegrees to scientific workforce development, California must make its postsecondary systemaccessible to students of all backgrounds and in relation to the distribution of ethnicities in thepopulation. This is my future focus.CHANGES IN PLANSAfter obtaining more detailed data on URM Ph.D. recipients granted from UC between 1980 and1990, the number of URM students dropped from 415 to 221 once “Hispanics” were excluded asan “underrepresented” population. After great initial success in both finding and interviewingindividuals in the study, the process for both became very time consuming, and once found,several people refused to be interviewed.We also revised the questionnaire to capture greater detail generally and more informationabout participants’ family, so we re-interviewed around 30 people asking them only the newquestions. All of this substantially extended the time required to conduct interviews andextended the project time from 2 to 4 years, and diverted funding for travel and publication topersonnel. Since most of those who were found were from one campus, UC Berkeley, it made nosense to compare whether specific campuses affected student experience during graduate school.The distribution of fields was heavily skewed toward biology and chemistry with few in physicsor engineering of any kind. This did not allow for an effective comparison of graduateexperience of disciplinary culture. Otherwise, we accomplished most of what we set out to doand a great deal more in other areas.LIST OF PUBLICATIONS“The Graduate Experience of Women in SMET Fields and How it Could be Improved.” In JillM. Bystydzienski and Sharon M. Bird, eds., Removing Barriers: Women in Academic Science,Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. University of Indiana Press, 2006“Developing Graduate Students of Color for the Professoriat in Science, Technology,Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).” Keeping Our Faculties of Color Conference, 11/04.http://www.cce.umn.edu/kof/cdrom/pdfs/KOF007_DevNextGen_MacLachlan_A.pdfAnne J. MacLachlan — Spencer Report-5-“Research on Addressing Institutional Challenges in Science and Engineering to IncreaseFaculty of Color.” Plenary Panel Address, Keeping our Faculties of Color Conference, U. ofMinnesota, November 18, 2004. Available:http://www.cce.umn.edu/pdfs/CPE/KOF/Anne_MacLachlan_Paper.pdf“Why be a Professor? The Experience of Underrepresented STEM Ph.D.s Earned from theUniversity of California between 1980-1990.” AAAS Annual Meeting, Seattle, February 15, 2004“Career Choices, Promotion and Retention of Ph.D. Women Scientists in the ScientificWorkforce.” For the 12th International Conference of Women Engineers and Scientists: Womenin a Knowledge Based Society. Ottawa, Ontario, July 27-31, 2002. Published in ConferenceProceedings, November 2002“Gender in the Career Paths of Ph.D. Women Scientists in the Scientific Workforce.” Womenand Research Conference, European Directorate for Research, Brussels. November 8-9, 2001. InLinda Maxwell, Karen Slavin, Kerry Young, eds. Gender and Research. Brussels: EuropeanCommission, 11, 2002“Against the Odds: How Minority Women Scientists Negotiate the Workplace.” In MakingStrides, AAAS, July 2001“The Lives and Careers of Minority Women Scientists.” For The 3th Annual InternationalConference, Women in Higher Education, organized by NAWE, New Orleans, January 8-11,2000, paper published on own website: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/

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A Longitudinal Study of Minority Ph.D.s from 1980-1990: Progress and Outcomes in Science and Engineering at the University of California during Graduate School and Professional Life (2006).

A Longitudinal Study of Minority Ph.D.s from 1980-1990: Progress and Outcomes in Science and Engineering at the University of California during Graduate School and Professional Life (2006).

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