Introduction

We are here today to address a serious problem. The National Science Foundation has sponsored this summit meeting we are calling Promoting National Minority Leadership in Science and Engineering. We are happy that you have accepted our invitation to come. You are vital to the meeting's success. Our success will require people with the vision, determination, and clout to create and promote an effective plan that universities, industry, government and funding agencies will embrace and implement. We are not here just, once again, to lament the past. Through our discussions, we must formulate the beginnings of a plan that can advise policymakers.

Despite a generation of intense efforts, the nation continues to face the dilemma of perilously low minority representation in Science and Engineering. Even more troubling and threatening to future success is the lack of the next generation's minority national leadership. Who will replace the critically few senior minority leaders if we do not identify, nurture, and guide potential leaders into places of authority?

When I look around the room, I see examples of prominent national leaders who happen to be underrepresented minorities. I see senior faculty at important research institutions, leaders of national professional societies, industry leaders, university presidents and senior administrators, and managers of national laboratories. You are the existence proof that underrepresented minorities can be leaders. It would be good to ask all of you what factors you credit for your success -- how you got where you are today. We should ask the question -- what worked for us -- to see if those lessons learned can be applied to create many more of us.

In that vein, let me talk about my own personal experience and what helped me to become a leader. It was never in my design to be a leader. In fact, I grew up quite shy and quiet. I was not a star student in high school. I loved mathematics, but I also loved cars, and did not strive to be an academic star. No counselor or teacher ever advised me to go to college, so I went to work right after high school at a muffler factory. An older co-worker convinced me not to make the same mistake that he had made as a young person, that I was too smart to do what I was doing, and that I should go to college. I enrolled in community college, did very well, transferred to UCLA, and ultimately got a Ph.D. there.

If you ask me how my leadership evolved from those humble beginnings, I would say that one of the best things that ever happened to me was to go to the Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, one of the premier research institutions at that time. I met some of the finest mathematicians in the world, and also caring people who actually talked to me. I attended lectures, learned how to ask questions, and started to become more forward, more outspoken, and less shy. I co-authored papers with some of the finest mathematicians in the world. When I left that center, people knew me; I had established a network of important mathematicians that gave me a strong base for leadership in my field that exists even until today. Let me explicitly make the point so that nobody misses it -- I was given an incredible opportunity, and I took full advantage of it.

Today we will be talking about those two things -- institutions and individuals -- what institutions need to do to promote minority leadership and what individuals need to do to promote themselves as leaders.

What Institutions Must Do

We must face the fact that the quality of a person's institution is in large part going to determine how well positioned a person is to fulfill their leadership potential. If MIT, Stanford, Caltech, UC-Berkeley are producing leaders in terms of national organizations and professional societies, then we must have representation in these places, because the culture is such that you can't come in the back door. It is very hard to come in from the school that is not part of the network. You could say that's not fair. I agree, it's not fair, but that's the way it is, and trying to change that would be much harder, in my opinion, than changing the representation issue. Bowen and Bok, in The Shape of the River, argue that underrepresented minorities going to selective schools do turn out to be leaders, in fact, become leaders in proportions greater than the majority.

Let's just tell it like it is, shall we? A Ph.D. from Caltech, Princeton, or Stanford is going to have several points up over a Ph.D. from a less esteemed majority or minority serving institution. We do the leadership issue a disservice if we treat this fact as an ugly little secret that can't be talked about. We must face it and deal with it. Given this fact, shouldn't we strive to get more underrepresented students into more prestigious schools and then hold the institutions accountable for nurturing and preparing those students? I challenge these institutions: what leading university will step forward and distinguish itself with an innovative program to triple or quadruple its Ph.D. underrepresented minority production?

There are underrepresented minority students who have had first-rate educations who look like majority students, and in every way are as capable and as sophisticated. It really isn't an issue if they go to Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, or Cornell. They're going to do well. But that's not the bulk of the underrepresented minority population. And for schools that say, "we're going to fight for that first pool", I ask, what are you contributing to the nation's representation with that tactic? If you fight for members of the first pool by offering more money or more perks, you really haven't done anything to address the issue of underrepresentation. You've made your school look better. You can say Òoh, look we're leading the nation, or whatever you want to say, but what have you done for the global pool, what have you done for the underrepresentation crisis? You haven't done anything.

Instead of just fighting over the best students, I would like to ask that we identify and support the "second pool", the diamonds-in-the-rough that don't look like traditional candidates. Of course, I have biases here, because I myself was a part of the second pool, and because I've had success with students from the second pool at Rice. By second pool, we do not mean second class. The second pool consists of individuals who are certainly talented and capable, and can succeed given proper guidance, but who either have not been properly developed or properly evaluated. It is this second pool that we are losing. They take special effort. They require mentoring, guiding, and sometimes re-mediation. They may make a slower start. In our department, we have mostly the second pool, and we produce quality graduates. Our second-pool minority students have been combined with first-pool traditional students, and to our credit we have learned how to make it work. After one or two years, our second-pool students often are viewed as comparable to anyone in the department. So Rice has shown that what we propose -- looking more at second pool -- can be done successfully.

I'd like to say again that I came from this second pool, so I have some particular sensitivity here. I frequently tell our Graduate Admissions committee when I'm arguing for a certain minority student applicant, that they would not have accepted me based on the traditional criteria that they are applying. Our department is not that different from others. If we had gotten the quality of traditional applicants that Stanford gets, the faculty would have been extremely happy, we would have accepted them, and it would have been impossible to get a second-pool minority student accepted. But we didn't, so we accepted students who didn't have all A's necessarily or who had low board scores, but who had faculty saying this person is a very creative person. We have case after case of success under these parameters. Now we challenge other selective schools to do what Rice did.

Of course, if we look to this second pool, then we most likely will have to do more to help students overcome some lack of preparation. Retention activities are always important, but they are absolutely critical with this group. These students may face what I call the "moment of truth". This is a time when you change comfort levels. You go from a situation where you have been quite comfortable to one where you are uncomfortable. For an African American student it could be moving from a school that was predominantly African American to a school that is predominantly majority. It could be a change that occurs at first grade, middle or high school, college, graduate school, faculty, at a job, or even at a high-level leadership position. At Rice, it frequently happens to students who have come from minority schools. The main problem they're dealing with is feeling isolated and alone in an unfamiliar and seemingly unfriendly environment. The academic problems may or may not be present, but certainly the students are dominated by a drastic change in environment. A support group of caring individuals -- some peer, some faculty -- must intervene to smooth the transition and reduce the possibility of losing individuals at these critical junctures.

Universities must do more to support these activities as part of their mission. Retention activities must become much more a formal part of the reward system throughout all levels of the university -- undergraduate through tenure. To be successful, programs must be integrated into departments and not relegated to "minority land" led solely by staff. The scientific community is elitist about this activity as well. They will not respect it if it is not led by faculty members who understand faculty culture. At Rice, we have been quite successful with a model of faculty leading our retention programs with extensive staff support. Universities should also reward faculty for their participation in these very time-intensive activities. It must become a formal part of the university reward system if we are to change the culture.

I'd like to ask that we hold presidents accountable for mandating change. Presidents talk a good game, but they must go down to the level of the dean and the chairs and say, "Look, this is a part of the mission and you must play a role in this. You will be held accountable. In turn, success in these areas will be reflected in the reward system." We must align the reward system with this mission. I have seen far too many times individuals who buy into the mission, work really hard with students (which costs them something, in terms of research productivity), then suffer at the time of promotion or at a time of tenure, because while the university said this was of value, it wasn't valued enough to be a part of the evaluation process.

I believe departments should be the unit of accountability. I don't believe all individuals should be the same. I think some faculty members are very good at certain things and others at other things, but I think a department is a sufficiently large unit to say it's good or bad at supporting our mission. It is done a good job of bringing in nontraditional students, nurturing them and educating them well. When departments are faced with this, however, they will say, "But how do we stay in the 'Top 10' and still do this?" I say, the accountability system should be such that you can't get in the Top 10 if you don't. We must make representation a criterion in judging how well departments are doing.

We must deal with the risk-averse problem in faculty hiring. Departments must say ÒWe are being held accountable for more than just research. Look, this person is a good researcher but he will also give us many dimensions that we have never had.Ó When I was hired, I was not the first choice. I know that. The first choice went on to a very undistinguished career. I was hired as a second choice. But I don't think I was evaluated with the expectation that I'd bring dimensions of teaching, of nurturing, of mentoring, of research, of national visibility. And yet, I can honestly say that I didn't doubt that I would do all those things even though those doing the hiring were not able to predict that.

As we move up through the selection ranks -- undergraduate admissions, graduate admissions, then departmental hiring -- selection becomes more and more traditional. By far, departmental hiring is the most traditional. I think most individuals in a department want to replicate themselves. I am good; therefore good people will look just like me. The department itself is extremely risk averse when a candidate looks a little different, and this surely includes underrepresented minorities. The dimensions in which they can contribute seem not to be evaluated at hiring time. In all, I believe that departmental hiring is perhaps the most problematic of all the admissions, if you will allow me to call it "admissions".

One difficulty that I have encountered with my own minority students is placing them after graduation in positions where they will be challenged. I think that they have started to reach their potential, they're ready to go, but they can't get the experience, the post doc experience, the faculty experience at a university that would be challenging to them, and yet I believe that they would be competitive there. They just need an entrŽe; they just need a way to get there, they need a similar opportunity to what I had at the University of Wisconsin. Perhaps what we need is a national high-level intern program where students are placed with leaders in their field. They would bring with them full funding and the research director would be charged with guaranteeing that the student is fully integrated into the research group. Funding agencies like NSF could make a real difference with such a program.

What Individuals Must Do

Building a solid research career is the first essential to leadership in science. Throughout my career, it has been important to me to be recognized as a mathematician who happened to be a minority. I realized that I would be evaluated on my research credentials. The scientific community is elitist about this topic. They will not respect or promote the professional minority who does not have those credentials. I don't want to be a professional minority who happens to be a mathematician. I want to be a mathematician who happens to be a minority.

Because of this, I counsel students to get tenure first before they start doing outreach. Build your career as a scientist first, and then you will have a strong foundation on which to give to others.

Yet I find minority graduate students choosing the "comfortable" advisors. They tend to avoid the aggressive advisor or the aggressive research group. Their choice often will be a junior, non-tenured faculty member, or maybe a minority faculty member, and that's often not the best choice. This creates a double whammy for minority leadership. It puts too much burden on the young minority faculty member who is really trying to get tenure or go forward, and it doesn't position the student to establish a strong network. I believe these are things that can be dealt with through proper mentoring and advising. I've had numerous minority students at Rice who have said, ÒOh no, I could never work with that person.Ó But they did, and it was a wonderful experience.

Individuals must be bold in their self-development and self-promotion if they are to attain national leadership positions. Some minority students are bold and daring by nature or through positive experiences with risk-taking. As we all recognize however, the majority of underrepresented minority students are not. I have found in my work here at Rice that underrepresented minorities frequently shy away from self-promotion and are highly averse to risk-taking. Or sometimes they just don't know how to navigate the waters of the scientific-research world, making mentoring so essential to these students. A fundamental theorem of mentoring underrepresented minorities is this: assume students don't know what they should do and that they need your advice. A hands-off approach in mentoring underrepresented minorities just doesn't work. Oftentimes, I play the role of a caring father when the students that I mentor need correction or advice. If you must err, err on the side of too much rather than too little intervention. I have had students tell me -- we didn't know we needed mentoring; we didn't want mentoring, but now we realize that it was of great value.

Networking is absolutely critical to leadership, yet networking requires the boldness that we are talking about. It is highly unlikely that one can build a strong network through timidity. Professional development in networking is essential for underrepresented minorities. When you take minority students to conferences, require them to look for opportunities to network. Don't assume that they will just naturally do this. Insist that they ask questions of speakers in their area. Introduce them to your network of colleagues and include them in both social and professional situations. Also insist that they attend colloquia when they are at home and get to know the faculty in their department. That way they can become a part of their network as well. We all walk a tightrope of being too pushy and aggressive or too timid and passive, but if the student or young faculty member shows a genuine interest in the science, that will be valued by the senior person. Otherwise it will come across as self-promotion for its own sake.

Let your students know that you sometimes volunteer to give talks, that you have done your own share of self-promotion. Encourage students to make every opportunity to give talks and write papers. Professional rejection and failure hurts, but it won't kill you. We all have to learn to deal with failure.

We must insist that institutions change, and yet that is such a long, slow process that we can't wait for institutions to solve the problem of leadership for us. We must as individuals do all that we can to support and promote potential underrepresented minority leaders. We in this room are all examples that it can be done.

To conclude, here are some questions that I suggest as possible topics for our discussion throughout the day.

1. Can leadership be developed without first solving the underrepresented minority problem?

2. How much of a scientist does one have to be to be a successful leader? Is an end run around research desirable or advisable?

3. Is it easier to close the leadership gap than to close the scientific representation gap at level one research schools and other important places?

4. Some get Ph.D.s in science and move immediately into educational outreach or administrative positions. Should underrepresented minorities emulate this activity?

5. Can minority leadership problems be solved by minorities alone or any one segment of a population?

6. What categories do we need when evaluating success for underrepresented minorities, i.e. is it enough to treat all Hispanics as one?

I hope some of the issues I've shared with you will stimulate good conversation, thank for coming, and now let's have some questions and discussion.