In a continuing effort to bolster graduate student diversity, the University announced several initiatives last week designed to recruit and retain underrepresented minority students in its graduate programs.

Two programs launched last year have been extended: a grant program allowing faculty to apply for up to $500 to cover the cost of campus visits for prospective students and the summer Graduate Student Institute, which emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to student interaction.

New initiatives offered this year include a Graduate Student Diversity Day on Feb. 23 and a fellowship program for Mexican doctoral students.

In a Nov. 2006 Faculty Senate presentation on graduate diversity, Gail Mahood, associate vice provost for graduate education and a professor of geological and environmental sciences, noted that there are more retirement-age minority faculty members than there are minority graduate students.

One solution the report proposed was to intensify recruitment efforts. Associate Dean of Students Thom Massey ‘69, who concentrates on cultural and diversity education, said that Stanford’s location made prospective student visits particularly important.

“We have to have more than just faculty involved in increasing diversity,” Massey said. “Our students are especially valuable because Stanford is so geographically far away from so many places. Both undergraduate and graduate students here have made the decision to come to Stanford regardless — they can help convince and reassure prospective students that the environment here is a welcoming one.”

Last year, faculty from the department of aeronautics and astronautics used money from the grant program to cover the expenses of three prospective women from the East Coast, said Lynn Kaiser, director of student services for the department.

“In our department, females are a minority,” Kaiser said. “I think the visit helped the visiting students make an informed decision about their graduate education. In fact, one of them accepted right away.”

The conclusion of Mahood’s November report, however, emphasized the importance of what is called the “pipeline” issue, or the retention of Stanford’s own minority undergraduates in addition to recruitment of students from other schools.

Mahood said that the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education, a new position that opened in January, is currently working on providing support to the Arthur

Walker Program for the Advancement of Science and Engineering, which will begin this spring. The long-term goal of the program, Mahood wrote in an email to The Daily, is to address the pipeline issue for minority students by ensuring retention at the “leaky” points in the pipeline.

At a Jan. 25 Faculty-Senate meeting, however, Biology Prof. Russell Fernald called on fellow faculty and administrators to explore other means to encourage undergraduates to consider graduate careers. He requested data collection for the number of Stanford undergraduates going on to graduate school.

“Faculty have to realize that we are part of the pipeline,” Fernald said. “At the Senate meeting, I also noted that the cost of being a graduate student has gone up remarkably. This might also contribute to the lack of minority students in graduate schools — especially if we don’t make clear what an academic career entails.”

Stanford’s success in promoting undergraduate diversity has long been held as a model for graduate diversity, according to Massey.

“Institutionally, we have to start somewhere, perhaps at the level with most potential,” he said. “But now, we’ve got to look at what we’ve done with the undergraduate population and couple it with our efforts to promote graduate diversity. And recruitment is only the first step. We need to put as much effort into retention as we do in recruitment.

“It’s more difficult for graduate students because their tenures are longer, which means that they’ll be looking closely at the Stanford environment,” he added. “We have to give them all the information they need to be able to take advantage of our campus.”

Mahood said one way of evaluating the success of diversity initiatives is to look at the acceptance rate of minority applicants in addition to the opinion surveys that are already in use. In the longer term, administrators plan to look at statistics on retention and degree completion.

Massey noted, however, that the initiatives would not work by themselves.

“If faculty don’t take advantage of [the programs], then they’re not helpful,” he said. “If our goals aren’t being reached, we’ve got to take a look at the things we’ve decided so far to go forward with.”

According to Mahood, faculty involvement has not been an issue thus far. She said she has already approved faculty requests to bring more than 30 applicants to campus in addition to the more than 100 applicants who will attend graduate recruiting and diversity events.