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Recently, grant has been awarded for research on universities and colleges that serve Hispanic, Black and Native American students. This data gathering is to be done by two professors’, University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Marybeth Gasman and University of Wisconsin’s Dr. Clifton Conrad. This grant amounting to $1.5 million will be used to document and collect data on nine institutions that serve minorities.

According to Conrad, if the data is looked at with the actual value in mind rather than hanging on to stereotypical opinions, then we find that as compared to the White universities and colleges, the MSIs are actually outperforming.

In comparison with other institutions, certain MSIs are producing better student outcomes in terms of test scores, high school grades and family background. The grant will help identify institutions that have established a model of success by adopting best practices. The research will then document these practices and publicize and promote them as much as possible.

Each of the colleges participating in the program will be given a grant of $50,000. This will enable them to document their successes with efficient analysis. According to Gasman, after having advertised widely, they have received over 60 applications from MSIs. Six year graduation rates and other improvements and innovations were not reflected in the statistics. For schools where many transfer students drop in and out, this is a poor measure says Gasman.

From the applications, a few finalists were shortlisted including three HBCUs, three Hispanic serving institutions, Norfolk State University, Morehouse, Paul Quinn college, San Diego City college, El Paso community college, three tribal colleges Chief Dull Knife College, Salish Kootenai College, College of the Menominee Nation and La Sierra University.

The focus of most of the programs was on ensuring that most number of students were retained and completed their graduation. There was more emphasis on helping minority students especially in science and math classes.

In the Chief Dull Knife College, Montana for example, each semester saw only about 45 student enrolments in science and math with a 46% graduation rate between the years 1997 and 2003. As a response to this statistics,

In response to this data, remedial education was infused with a computer assisted approach by the CDKC. Here, students were allowed to study at their own pace as opposed to the classroom based traditional lecture classes where progress will be deeply inhibited by student absence.

Certain institutions introduced other innovations such as preferring pass/fail skills mastery system over letter grades, hiring full time instructors for math, closely tracking student progress and giving more credits for remedial.

When all this was implemented the next six years saw a three hundred percent increase in the number of students attending mathematics pre-college courses. The completion rate surged to 66 percent. At the college level, there was a 400 percent increase in math enrollment with a 72% completion rate.

The ground breaking grant process saw funds coming from organizations such as the USA funds, Kresge Foundation and the Lumina Foundation. According to the Access and Outreach senior vice president of the USA funds Bob Ballard, increasing retention rate of minority students is a top priority now as they are a large portion of our college population.