CIRTL Forum: June 18th, 2008
MSI Session A : Q&A

[Introduction by Katherine Friedrich]: The following question and answer session from the CIRTL Forum 2008 explores what future faculty can expect when applying for jobs at minority serving institutions. The presenters are Kelly Mack, professor of Biology at University of Maryland Eastern Shore; Clytrice Watson, assistant professor of Biology at Delaware State University; and Olac Fuentes, associate professor of Computer Science at University of Texas El Paso. The moderator is Orlando Taylor, vice provost for research and dean of the graduate school at Howard University.

[Orlando Taylor]: I was tempted to ask Dr. Fuentes to ask this rolling. Does one have to know Spanish to teach at a place like UTEP? I know the answer, but would you respond to it?

[Olac Fuentes]: Ok. So, the answer is no. In my department, there are two Hispanic faculty out of fifteen, and there are two speakers of Spanish, and there are the same by the way. The intersection is just me. So, having a willingness to learn a little bit is good, but it's really not a requirement.

[Orlando Taylor]: Not essential.

[Olac Fuentes]: No, not at all.

[Audience Member]: What role does language play at an institution that is 75% Hispanic with a significant portion of Mexican nationals?

[Olac Fuentes]: Well, it's certainly something that helps, but it's not a requirement. Our classes are taught in English. Our grad students are international, mostly from India and China. They are the TA's. So it's good to have it, it's not indispensible, and the university, there's some effort on offering free Spanish classes for faculty which many people take advantage of, but not as many as they would like.

[Orlando Taylor]: Would you introduce yourself … when you make your questions, would you introduce yourselves? It will give us the sense of who you are and where you're from, and where are you from, may I ask?

[Audience Member]: Indiana University. I'm a PhD candidate there.

[Orlando Taylor]: My first faculty job was at Indiana. Nikki.

[Audience Member]: I'm Nikki Schultz from Oregon State University, and I'm interested to know if you have formal graduate teaching assistant training, and if so, how you prepare graduate students to work with the diversity within your student body?

[Kelly Mack]: We do not.

[Clytrice Watson]: We just started at Delaware State. Any new graduate student, any new faculty, are now requested, graduate students are required, new faculty are requested to attend a training session on teaching and to do's and don'ts of being a graduate students and new faculty members.

[Orlando Taylor]: Can you hear in the back? Ok. Howard has required TA training. It's an eight hour, straight over two days, requirement for every graduate assistant or even, we call graduate teaching associate, that's the first who actually has the teacher record from a class, and within that context there is a piece, probably not enough, on teaching diverse students. And for us, it's particularly important for our international students. So we do have it and it's a very important part of our work.

[Olac Fuentes]: We don't have anything at the university level. The different departments have programs. My department has a program just because we got a grant to do that. There is no funding from the university when the grant goes out, and it probably will finish that program.

[Orlando Taylor]: Yes

[Audience Member]: Carl Scroughbaum from UCLA. I was very interested in the remark some of the panelist made about increasing cultural sensitivity. One of the issues that I think, Orlando, you brought up, was this notion of marginalizing HBCU's and other minority serving institutions when it comes to large research universities trying to help position their graduate students into faculty positions. And I just wanted to get a sense of your opinions on how one actually provides a mechanism for that cultural sensitivity to take place. As part of my job as associate dean working with diversity and I've been visiting several HBCU's and realizing what a wonderful resource they are for us, for potential graduate students, but getting our graduates back to those institutions to become faculty members. And of course, a good part of that is not understanding, you know, the differences, whether it’s a Hispanic serving institution or if it’s a historically black institution.

[Orlando Taylor]: I’m going to ask Dr. Mack to take that. I laughed by the way because we’ve been having a spirited discussion among ourselves about how best to do that. I’m glad you raised the question. Dr. Mack.

[Kelly Mack]: Well I think when I talk about cultural competency I think it spans teaching research and service. In terms of teaching, and Dr. Watson and I have talked about this, it comes down to the examples that we use to fortify concepts in the biological sciences. For instance, I have a colleague who was trying to teach a concept in biology, I forget the concept he was trying to teach, but he was using as an example, sand at the beach and what was going on with sand. And he was so frustrated because the students didn’t get it. And just understanding that most of our students probably had never been to the beach, and so to take something that is abstract to them, present them with another abstract example, and expect that that would provide the link for them. One of the things, if I’m teaching about, for instance, isotonic solutions and hypertonic solutions, I use the example of making Kool-aid, because Kool-aid is something that is inherent in the African American culture because it’s so cheap. So providing those kinds of examples, and I think one way of achieving that if you’re not of that culture is just to immerse yourself in that culture. To learn the language. I spent a copious amount of time with my students. One example, in my office, it was formerly the chairman’s office, and so there’s a reception area where the secretary where the secretary used to sit, and I’ve reserved that for the students that I mentor. And so I’ve got a computer in there, state of the art, I’ve got a big wide screen, there’s a color Xerox machine, everything that they would need to attract them to that space because that’s where they gather. So while their out there congregating, I’m in the back, and usually I’m listening just to what they’re talking about. What’s important to them, who’s dating whom, who broke up with whom, because all of these things are relevant to them and play a role in how they perform in the classroom, so that when student X comes in and she’s crying and she’s upset because she failed the exam, I know that it’s probably related to the fact that dude was fooling around with the other girl. But all of these things make up the entire students, so it’s more or less, if I had to sum it up, taking a holistic approach to teaching.

[Orlando Taylor]: I’d like to give a brief response to that as well. In a lot of talk about scholarship and teaching learning, and I think there’s a rich area for research for those in the STEM areas to try to determine why some students fail that may be related to gender or ethnic differences and so forth. Because it’s a very controversial area but we know up front, the sort of students do poorly in mathematics and do poorly in some of the science areas, and the historical model has been, we’ll blame something about them. It’s poor high school background, or lack of interest, or something external to the pedagogy. I think an important area for research might be, I emphasize might, might be, to examine whether certain models of teaching, or like problem based learning or service learning, or collaborative learning or so forth, or a certain topic within the science areas, might be more effective for certain groups, or sub-groups, of students. I don’t know the answer to it because you have to be very careful with this work because it can very quickly move to a stereotype. Women are right brained, therefore they can only learn a certain way. Sexist, a sexist idea, but maybe some acculturation of some groups of women in the society might in fact lead to a collaborative type model which may be useful. These are research areas that I think that the scholarship of teaching and learning has not paid enough attention to, has not looked enough at ethnic and gender differences learning science that might give us a window through which to peer that might improve, that might enhance academic achievement. I just finished a fifth seed project called, learning communities to teach standards. They’ve shown some very promising results, albeit, admittedly, it was only at four institutions. I see three hands over here. You can go first, and then Sondra will be next. Tell us who you are.

[Audience Member]: Sam Beshers, entomology and neuroscience, University of Illinois. Orlando, I met you at …

[Orlando Taylor]: Oh yes, I remember you vividly. You were at Stanford.

[Audience Member]: Kind of a follow up on what Professor Mack said, and for all of you, you talked about immersing yourself in, say, the African American culture. Is it African American culture, or cultures, and the same with Hispanic culture. How diverse is it within the groups? And I don’t know, I’m just wondering.

[Orlando Taylor]: Olac, you want to go first?

[Olac Fuentes]: Ok. With respect to Hispanic culture, it’s very true, one thing is to over generalize. Our population is mostly Mexican-American, if you go to Florida International, those are mostly Cuban-American, and if you go to New York, they are Puerto Rican-American. And it’s true, there are some big differences and its and over generalization to speak of Hispanic culture. So what I said I think applies mostly to all Hispanic groups, but it’s based on my experience with Hispanic students. Of course, somebody coming from Florida International would have an easier time adapting to UTEP than somebody coming from Brigham Young, or the University of Wisconsin. So yeah, I agree with you. There are several.

[Orlando Taylor]: Kelly, do you care to comment?

[Kelly Mack]: Again, I would just go back to taking a holistic approach to the students. Going to what Olac had said, I’m aware of that study that looked at African American students and popularity versus GPA, and we see that a lot, particularly with our male students. And so understanding those kinds of things would leave one to then do a little more to promote male students who are excelling. In general, they will keep it a secret if there’s an African American student who is doing well, they do not let their friends know. And so, then understanding that I can have an honor student in the class who will excel, who will do well on the exams, but then I can go out in the yard and see that same student, perhaps with his pants hanging down, hat cocked to the side, and for me to allow him to be that in his group and among his peers because my first inclination would be to go and pull his pants up or at least tell him that he needs to. But for me to understand that that’s what he has to do in order for him to fit in and feel good about who he is. Again, a holistic approach.

[Clytrice Watson]: And may I comment from this gentleman, when you said how do we incorporate cultural sensitivity, one of the things that I’ve done, and it’s just my nature, in the fall I have a class of 75 students in my general biology class and I have a large number of students coming from the Ag department, and biology majors and other majors that are just trying to fill that state requirement. And the first day of class, I notice, I really paid attention last year, all of my white students were in the corner, all the Ag students, and all the black students, it was sporadic. And I said, “Will everyone stop and look around, what do you notice?”, and I thought maybe I was gonna cross the line a little bit so I had to be careful, but I decided I just didn’t care. And I said, “what do you notice”, and nobody said anything. I said, “well I notice some segregation going on and it’s 2007, and we don’t need to segregate ourselves anymore, so lets mix it up a little bit”. So I required my students to integrate in my class, and I did not allow these isolated groups of individuals.

[Audience Member]: Remember the Titans, with Denzel Washington.

[Clytrice Watson]: Right, right. That’s right, I required them to integrate within my class, I said, “I don’t care what you do outside the class, but in here we integrate”, and it extended into our laboratory sections. I noticed they still tried to migrate in their little groups, but I broke that up.

[Audience Member]: So we couldn’t do that with the faculty, right?

[Clytrice Watson]: Yes, we have to.

[Orlando Taylor]: Yes.

[Clytrice Watson]: And the interesting thing is, I’m at an HBCU but I’m the only minority female in my department. So you can imagine that I have a large following of students who want to be my advisees, and I have to tell them, “No, you go and meet with your advisor and you form a relationship with them. Don’t just attract, be attracted to me because I’m a minority and I look like you, you need to learn how to deal with other people in order to be effective once you leave Delaware State, because once you leave Delaware State, it’s no longer and HBCU type environment, you have to learn how to deal with all different sorts of people.

[Orland Taylor]: I’d like to make two, I feel like a, a closer for a baseball team, with all these comments. I’m so glad that Dr. Watson made her last comment because it helped to amplify the point I tried to make in my brief remarks in the panel earlier this afternoon. She said she was the only minority woman faculty member in her department, yet she’s at an HBCU. What she basically didn’t say to you is that, probably in your department, African American’s are a minority.

[Clytrice Watson]: Mmm hmmm. I’m the … there’s one other African American male.

[Orlando Taylor]: At an HBCU … so the point is is that these institutions, and probably yours as well, African American’s are a minority in your department. Bill Eckberg, my associate Dean is in the back of the room, and you used to chair Biology before I liberated you, right? Were African American’s a minority in Biology at Howard Univeristy?

[Bill Eckberg]: Not a minority …

[Orlando Taylor]: Faculty I’m referring to.

[Bill Eckberg]: Yeah. Not a minority, but roughly about half.

[Orlando Taylor]: So the point is, you have a very diverse faculty at these institutions, people sitting in this room, and most come with little of the training that you talked about. Sam, I’m so glad you asked your question, because all these institutions have, depending upon location and depending upon history and legacy, depending on whether they are public or private, might have some rather, to allow, for sake of a better term, diverse subgroups within them. You have varied middle class, third or fourth generation African American students coming to a Howard University who, both parent have PhD’s who are professors at the University of Illinois, for example. We have some who come from the inner city of Washington DC or New York, all in the same institution. They may have some things however that cut across class lines, like music and television programs, and dress. You can’t tell the socioeconomic status by the dress of the students. But yet on the other hand, they might have had experience while having traveled with their parents, or to Africa with their parents. So there would be a range of behaviors, and I’m glad you asked the question because we would not want to replace one set of stereotypes with another set. The key point is, I think Dr. Mack hit it, is that, and we don’t talk about this much in higher education, we’re educating the whole students. And I’ve learned some things recently in thinking about that myself because I tend to only know students in the cognitive domain. They don’t know much about me, Orlando the person. I kind of keep that to myself. I’ll operate out here in this … But, and I kind of keep that with the students, I don’t really want to know who they’re dating and breaking up, I don’t want to know that. Alright? But she’s recognizing that you’re educating a whole person, and to really understand and to reach students, it’s different model. It’s a model that does lead to success. These individuals have not told you about their successes, I’ll take a stab at one, I know that Dr. Mack to my left here, at an institution that largely has lower income inner city urban students, she has 36 students, roughly, currently pursuing their PhD in STEM. Remarkable number, it would be rare to find any professor in this country who could say I have 34, 35 students currently pursuing their PhD in STEM. That’s an example of what can happen by mentoring the whole person. I’ll charge you for that commercial later. [laughter]

[Audience Member]: A couple of comments. Nobody on the panel used the term stereotype threat, but I think that that is very important …

[Orlando Taylor]: Quite relevant.

[Audience Member]: Yeah, in one who’s going to be working in a minority serving institution, and just briefly, it refers to the fact that if there’s a negative stereotype about the group from which you come, then you are very reluctant to ask questions, or to say things that might reinforce that stereotype. And so, students many times are reluctant to ask questions or say things, or even give answers that they know because they don’t want to, they’re not sure that they are right. And people from the majority culture are not really faced with that phenomenon, and it has to do with the confidence that Olac talked about. And I think that one of the biggest differences I see so many of the minority students who are pursuing STEM disciplines, they’ve been repeatedly told in high school, and sometimes by college counselors, that, “well you can’t succeed in this area”, so they are not that confident, so I think that it’s really important to form those relationships and to develop the confidence, and show that you believe that the student can succeed because so often everything in their background has said, you can't be successful, and then when they hit that first rough spot then they just assume, well they must have been right. And I think that's really important. And then, I just had a question about the author of popularity versus GPA? I had not seen that study.

[Orlando Taylor]: Ogbu had one major study, John Ogbu, a sociologist at Berkeley did some major studies going back as far as high school, but there are later ones I believe you referred to.

[Olac Fuentes]: I think I even have a copy of that. I will give it to you.

[Audience Member]: Thank you.

[Orlando Taylor]: Regarding Claude Steele, I think those who don't know Claude Steele's work about reading about stereotype threat ought to be the first reading em', I'm sure you know Claude in California. And it might also work for women in science, belief systems that women are supposed to do certain kinds of things and therefore reluctance to step out and do things for fear that they would in fact reinforce stereotypes. You've been trying to get a word in edge-wise. Tell us who you are.

[Audience Member]: Yes. Question on the tenure and promotion process. The research on STEM education, if a faculty member wants to, one of the traditional disciplines and try to do the research on tenure, I'm sorry, the research on STEM education as part of the research, will it be counted, could they get promotion? Or will be it counted as teaching or service instead?

[Kelly Mack]: We allow it up to the individual to determine whether or not that is, that will go towards teaching. More than likely if that's your research domain, then you will want that to be counted as your research in scholarly productivity, and if that's how you present it in the dossier, that's how it's considered.

[Orlando Taylor]: Ok, lets go to this side. Jenny?

[Audience Member]: Yes, thank you. I'm Jenny Dorman, I'm from the University of Washington in Seattle.

[Orlando Taylor]: The other Washington.

[Audience Member]: The other Washington. [laughter]

[Orlando Taylor]: That's what they call us.

[Audience Member]: In this neck of the woods, right? And I work at the Center for Teaching and Learning there and I'm also a biologist by training and I work with a lot of relatively advanced graduate students who are looking ahead to what comes next and how they position themselves, how they describe their experiences in a way that's gonna be compelling to prospective employers. And a lot of them come to our center as they're writing a teaching statement, and their racking their brains thinking, "what of my experiences am I emphasizing here? And I'm aware of some gaps I have, how do I make those seem less obtrusive? What would be of interest?". And one of the things that strikes me as I listen to all of your comments is looking at the diversity within the communities that they would be working with at any of your institutions. Our institution, some shockingly high percentage of our students, like thirty or forty percent, come from the county in which the institution is positioned. There is some diversity, but it's not dramatic, and at least not in some parameters. I think there's a lot of diversity at other levels. What kinds of things might you recommend to a graduate students who is coming up in an R1 and in my experience sometimes that's an asset in the eyes of potential employers, sometimes it's something that you have to mitigate or make a case that though that's where your education has been, you actually have broader experience. So what advice might you give to a graduate student who is being trained in an R1 environment that's a fairly homogenous one in terms of race and class, but who is really interested in exploring a wider range of options, about the kinds of things they could be doing while they're in graduate school or the aspects of their experience they could emphasize when it comes to going on the job circuit?

[Kelly Mack]: When we do searches for new faculty, and we sit down and we look at the criteria that we want to judge the applicants by invariably one of the criteria will be experience with underrepresented minority students. And so if you're in a Research One institution or a research intensive institution, often times they have summer undergraduate research programs for minorities and so if you have had experience training an underrepresented minority student in the laboratory, that certainly is a plus in our minds. If you haven't been directly engaged in the classroom with students, I think that's one example of how you can become involved with training or teaching underrepresented minority students.

[Orlando Taylor]: I would have two suggestions, one, and I know your demographics, I've been in King county. I think, number one, I would try to get our graduate students to visit a minority serving institution and to meet the faculty and the students sometime during their career. Those of you from an institution with a PFF programs, I know you visit institutions, so I'm thinking about going to the Seattle Community College in your case, in Seattle, where there's a fair, probably more diversity there than at UW. That would be a place I would start. Or if you're going to a meeting in Atlanta, make arrangements to go over to Clarke, Atlanta, or Spellman College, find people in your department, find out who those people are and say, I'm in town, I'd like to come visit your department, meet your students, and so on. And talk with the faculty, I think that would give the graduate students a sense of what it's like to teach at a diverse institution. And the third thing I think I would recommend, and this would be true for the mentors as well, perhaps we ought to start with the faculty as much as the students to get the faculty to visit these institutions, not just to recruit. We get a lot of folks visiting minority serving institutions to suck out the students to fulfill their diversity goals. I'm talking about another way of visiting. Visiting to discuss possible collaborations, research collaborations, or possible exchange programs, and things of that nature. I think that would be very very helpful to all involved. That's how I would do it, and it's amazing, if you look in most metropolitan areas, even of those that don't have a lot of diversity in your institution, I'm thinking UCLA now, all you've gotta do is go down to Dominguez, right? Dominguez Hills, or Cal State Dominguez, and you find enormous diversity in the Los Angeles basin. Or, King Seattle Community Colleges in Seattle. Find institutions where these students are and more often than not, they are in community colleges. Over half of all minority students in the United States, of underrepresented minority students, that would exclude Asian-Americans, are in community colleges. Almost half of all students are in community colleges in the United States, that why all the jobs are there. We have time for maybe two more questions and three more minutes. Lady in white, Jody, I can see that far.

[Audience Member]: All right, that's good. I had a question, just …

[Orlando Taylor]: What's your last name Jody, and where are you from?

[Audience Member, Jody Bruskowski]: Oh you couldn't read that?

[Orlando Taylor]: No! I could, but I didn't want Dr. Mack to feel embarrassed.

[Audience Member, Jody Bruskowski]: Bruskowski is the last name. Yeah, so you can spell it too … and I'm from Purdue. So I'm, in looking at, you've talked about immersing yourself in the culture of your campus, but what else, formally, are there different formal set-ups for your faculty mentoring, or for that early career faculty set-up in getting them into the community and setting up their life at your universities?

[Kelly Mack]: We don't have any formal kind of workshop or training or anything for new faculty who may not have had those kinds of opportunities. Often times, I guess through even a collaborative effort, for instance if you came to UMES then you could just hang out with me and that would be a way of incorporating you into the culture in getting students to trust you, and then after awhile they would just start gravitate towards you naturally. So since we don't have any formal kinds of training then we kind of just, almost make it up as we go along but we get really creative in ways to make that happen.

[Orlando Taylor]: I think you put your finger on an issue that we need to look at about preparing faculty to teach in diverse, in our own diverse environment because I don't think any of us do it. We don't do it at Howard either. And if you're not lucky enough to hook on to somebody like one of our colleagues here, you are up a tree. You just got to figure it out maybe, and the tenure clock is running, right?

[Audience Member]: Right [laughter]

[Audience Member]: And I was wondering, Purdue has set up for faculty working with diversity of students, but then, as an early career they have to do it within the first 2 years they have to go to seminar, so I just didn't know how other individuals at diverse, or you know the minority serving, did for there …

[Clytrice Watson]: At Delaware State we have in our department, or in our college, faculty mentoring, and that's been newly implemented over the course of the last two years. New faculty are paired up with a senior faculty member. The problem is, in my opinion, sometimes the senior faculty are not, some of them aren't the best mentors because they have tenure, they've had it for awhile, and they have sort of this "I don't care" attitude, just, "do what you feel". So that could be a problem, but we do have something in place at Delaware State, and actually for me, it's been very beneficial. I've been fortunate to have good faculty mentors.

[Olac Fuentes]: We also have faculty mentoring program, but it hasn't been as successful. I think we are seeing something like that, that very senior faculty really, there isn't much in it for them.

[Clytrice Watson]: They don't want to be bothered with the students or junior faculty.

[Olac Fuentes]: That’s in general, and if it's about the local culture, well, there are just a few people who really know the culture better like maybe our chair or I, and mentoring everybody in our department, and then we have limited time.

[Clytrice Watson]: And if I may personalize it a little bit, when I first finished my masters, I went to the University of Maryland to work, and Kelly was my peer mentor, and I had no intentions of getting a PhD, I was done with school as far as I was concerned. But through Kelly and our dean at the time who eventually became my research advisor, their motivation, inspirations, really encouraged me and others to pursue a terminal degree. And she was great, and we ended up doing a lot of great things at UMES.

[Orlando Taylor]: Sam, you'll have the last word.

[Audience Member]: Yeah, I should have asked this question first. Orlando, you've been saying that people ought to not discount the minority serving institutions. Why would our students, why should our students look for jobs at your institutions? Or to put it another way, what do you find most satisfying about what you're doing?

[Orlando Taylor]: Good last question. Each person, please give a response.

[Clytrice Watson]: I'm at an HBCU because I choose to be. That's where I find myself to be most effective. I made the decision to give back what was given to me, and my formal education was at an HBCU, and I feel that that's where I'm benefiting the students the most. I'm teaching students, inspiring students, and motivating students who are similar to me. Not just the color of my skin, but social economical backgrounds as well. And, in my mind, if they can look at me and say, "If she can do it, I can do it," then it's worth me being there.

[Orlando Taylor]: Olac? Why should a person want to pursue a career, why should Sam's send his students to UTEP?

[Olac Fuentes]: Right. I think the main reason would be because that's where you can make a bigger difference. At Stanford, students will succeed, regardless of your efforts to the contrary. At UTEP you can make a very big difference. Some students will actually succeed because of you. And also, from a more individualistic point of view, it offers you opportunities to pursue research. It has a PhD program, it has a fair number of people with whom you can collaborate, so I think it's a very good place for those two reasons.

[Orlando Taylor]: Kelly?

[Kelly Mack]: Well, given the statistics I heard today, I would say that the biggest reason why one should come to a minority serving institution is because we have jobs.

[laughter]

[Kelly Mack]: In addition to that, I would echo the sentiments of my fellow panelists in that there is a huge impact factor that we find in teaching at a minority serving institution. And also, given how we view mentoring, that we have such a strong commitment to our new faculty in making sure that they get promoted and tenured, as opposed to some institutions where I've heard they hired three people for one tenure track position and you kind of spend several years just vying for this one position. We have a stronger commitment to our faculty and their growth.

[Orlando Taylor]: And my answer would be that you should consider these institutions because if you have an interest in addressing societal needs as a part of your work, these institutions are great places for that. They are not ivory tower institutions for the most part. Even a research one like Howard would not say it's an ivory tower institution. In fact, in our mission statement it says explicitly that our goal is to prepare a cadre of individuals who through their scholarship will be able to increase the quality of life for society. So that's a big reason for coming, the other I think would be that if you want … it's a very personal one. And it's kinds of a little bit the way that Clytrice mentioned it. Most of the students today will have a career in front them of something approaching forty years, thereabouts, roughly. Thirty five to forty years. This country is changing rapidly. The gentleman from Arizona talked about the fact that, and I don't like the term by the way, minority, majority minority statement, because it always keeps certain groups always as minorities even though they are not. It's like keeping women in the minority, though they're not in the United States. But that's the reality. By the year 2050, the year by which me and a few other folk in the room will be considering retirement … that's supposed to be a joke [laughter] … Whites will be a minority in the United States. They already are in California and in Texas, and soon to be probably in Florida. And what better place to be prepared to teach in this rapidly changing world in which we live than minority serving institutions. So that's, it's a very personal reason, it's not the scientific reason, though they'll do that science. And as an aside by the way, there are some grants that you are eligible for that you can only apply for if you are at a minority serving institution. And it's opened the door for a lot of folks to get grants that they otherwise might not get because within the eligibility requirement it is that you're at a minority serving institution, and that's to your benefit. For NSF, for NIH. So I would put those things out there.

[Audience Member]: I just want to make …

[Orlando Taylor]: You'll have the last word.

[Audience Member]: I just wanted to say that, you know, cultural sensitivity is learned by direction, and it … gained by having different cultures represented in this global world.

[Audience Member]: And there are books that you can get and read about that. Cultural sensitivity, cultural competency …

[Katherine Friedrich]: This podcast was produced by the Center for the Integration of Research Teaching and Learning. This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers 0227592. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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