Science News
editors@ccgmag.com PRESIDENT RENEWS HBCUS INITIATIVE
President Barack Obama has signed an executive order renewing the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
The president signed the Feb. 26 decree before an audience of HBCU col- lege presidents, black lawmakers and students during an event in the East Room of the White House. The order contains two key provisions -- that it remain housed in the U.S. Department of Education to facilitate collaboration with federal departments, agencies and offices and other public and private en- tities, and also that a president’s board of advisors on HBCUs be established to advise the administration on how to strengthen the educational capacity of HBCUs. Hampton University President
William Harvey is chairing the panel.
Guiding the order are five key tasks to strengthen the capacity of HB- CUs to participate in federal programs; foster private sector initiatives and public-private partnerships to promote academic research and programmatic excellence; improve the dissemination and quality of information concerning HBCUs as a way of informing policy- makers; share administrative and pro- grammatic practices within the HBCU community, and explore new ways of improving the relationship between the federal government and HBCUs.
Obama noted the “tough chal- lenges” faced by HBCUs today, espe- cially shrinking endowments and state
FAILURES OF SCIENCE EDUCATION POLICY CITED
In testimony on Capitol Hill before the House Subcommit- tee on Research and Science Education, Dr. Shirley Malcom of the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned that significant institutional and cultural barriers continue to confront underrepresented minorities pursuing science and engineering degrees.
Malcom, the AAAS’ director of education and human resources, testified during the March 2010 hearing that rising higher educa- tion debt among undergraduates, lack of minority representation among faculty and peers, and failures of science education policy in individual school districts and within state and federal governments all serve to stymie the development of the next generation of scien- tists and engineers that will be needed to drive U.S. innovation.
While noting modest improvements over the past decade, Mal- com encouraged policy makers to identify specific impediments to science and engineering diversity in order to tailor solutions to dif- ferent racial or ethnic groups. Expanding federal science initiatives that have broadened participation in science education, such as the National Science Foundation’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, would help increase the number of Ph.D.s among underrepresented minorities.
Dr. Shirley Malcom
Additionally, Malcom advocated for higher standards, more rigorous coursework, and enhanced teaching in K-12 curricula to improve minority students’ preparation for college and university science. “Every person that comes into this world is a scientist,” Malcom said. “But we are killing a large part of that natural curios- ity with poor teaching and poorly designed curricula.”
budgets, falling enrollment and dete- riorating facilities. “These schools feel the pain more acutely,” the president said. “They do more with less, and they enroll higher proportions of low- and middle-income students.”
Obama called the survival of HBCUs a linchpin in his goal of making America the world leader in college graduates by 2020. The president noted $98 million in new funding for HBCUs in his fiscal 2011 budget, along with $20.5 million earmarked for the HBCU Capital Financing Program to provide institutions with access to fi- nancing for repair, renovation and con- struction or acquisition of educational facilities and physical infrastructure.
by M.V. Greene
64 USBE&IT I Deans Edition SPRING 2010
www.blackengineer.com
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