CEEE Director and Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Richard Tapia , and CEEE Executive Director and former mathematics teacher, Cynthia Lanius, presented the report "Underrepresented Minority Achievement and Course Taking -- The Kindergarten-Graduate Continuum at the NISE Forum on Diversity and Equity Issues in Mathematics and Science Education, held in Detroit, MI on May 22-23, 2000.

In this report, Tapia and Lanius conclude both from data and a combined 35-years of working in K-12 and higher education with underrepresented minority students that the past efforts to increase the participation and retention of underrepresented minority American students in SMET academic concentrations have succeeded only minimally, if at all. The need for success in this area is analyzed for the sake of the national economy, and the candid conclusion is that most current efforts undertaken by the academic institutions nationwide to this end are systemically broken, calling for broad structural changes.

“Increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities is critical to the health of this country. No first-world nation can maintain the health of its economy or society when such a large part of its population remains outside all scientific and technological endeavors,” reads a part of the introduction.

The entire report may be accessed online at http://ceee.rice.edu/Books/DV/continuum/