About 30 Tufts students and faculty met last Tuesday in the Rabb Room for an hour-long panel discussion entitled "Women and Students of Color in Science."
University Provost Jamshed Bharucha, who teaches in the Psychology Department, discussed why stereotypes about these groups exist. "Stereotypes are quick and easy frameworks for understanding groups of people," he said.
"It takes knowledge, research, and work to counteract them," Bharucha said. He said that there is progress in the growing fields of social psychology and social cognition working to identify causes of stereotypes and ways to reverse them.
The three female and two male panelists discussed issues surrounding women and minorities in the science.
In many ways, Tufts is doing well with underrepresented groups in the sciences. According to panelist Linda Abriola, Dean of the School of Engineering, about 30 percent of Tufts engineering students are female, twice the national average.
Another panelist, Naomi Rosenberg, Dean of the Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences, said that 62 percent of Sackler students are women.
According to statistics, Tufts has also been successful retaining women as a whole. Tufts's overall six-year graduation rate for females in 2003 was 91.7 percent, while that of men was 88.9 percent. The University's overall graduation rate in 2003 was 90.3 percent.
The picture for minority students is not as encouraging, however. The graduation rate for white students was 91.9 percent. Except for Asian students, who had a 94 percent graduation rate, the rates for African American, Latino, and other minority students were all below 80 percent.
While institutions pay attention to graduation rates, their picture of student decisions to remain enrolled are hardly clear-cut. "There could be a lot of things behind these rates," Margery Davies, the Director of Diversity Education and Development for the School of Arts and Sciences, said. "To be really able to understand them, you need to tease out what factors cause students to stay or leave," she said.
In many instances, women and minorities, which institutions refer to as "underrepresented groups," often face an uphill battle for respect and often face unequal treatment. "We are kidding ourselves if we think this is not happening at Tufts," Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Ernst said.
The panelists said they agreed that increased percentages of faculty and students from underrepresented groups can increase the diversity of the departments in the sciences.
"We can make sure there are faculty of color and women. Graduate students can also serve as role models," Ernst said.
Poor faculty retention of female and minority faculty at Tufts has been an evolving problem, as demonstrated by the Kaleidoscope Report, a survey released in 2004.
Women and minority retention rates in faculty were lower than 50 percent across the board. The loss of female faculty was particularly "severe" in the School of Engineering, according to the report.
In the 2004 Report, Asian American women held a retention rate of 50 percent; Hispanic women, 50 percent; Caucasian women, 42 percent; Asian American men, 40 percent; African American men, 40 percent; and Hispanic men, 25 percent.
While increased numbers of female and minority faculty do not guarantee improved treatment of underrepresented groups, administrators hope that it is generally that successful faculty and graduate students will increase confidence in students from underrepresented groups.
"There is something to be said for people who have had similar experiences," Davies said.
Greater percentages of women and minorities in the sciences can help genuine acceptance. "Having more women in science will make the male majority stop looking at them as a kind of rare species and accept them as colleagues in the long run," Dr. Gabriella Sciola, one of four female faculty in the physics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said.
Tufts' Diversity Office offers workshops for faculty to discuss issues of teaching a diverse student population, as well as opportunities for departments to have meetings between faculty and students.
A number of Tufts Programs also provide peer-tutoring and support and additional opportunities to explore topics in science and engineering for underrepresented groups. The Computer Science, Engineering and Math Scholarships Program, the First Year Scholars Program, and the Health Careers Opportunities Program are a few of these.
Davies said that it is still too early to comment on and measure the success of these programs.
The experts agreed that improving equality issues in science is complex. "Changes will have to come from both sides. Women and other minorities should have more faith in themselves, and pursue science careers if science is what they love," Sciola said.
