�� 3,000 and counting - educational aid to underrepresented students

Roberto Rodriguez

Several years ago, a number of educators, after deciding

there were not enough Latinos enrolled in graduate

schools around the country, created a program called

"Helping 500 U.S. Hispanic Students into Graduate

Schools."

To keep apace of success, the program has

undergone several name changes to keep up with the

escalating numbers of students who are being helped.

In fact, the group's expanded scope is encompassed by

its new name: Project 1000 -- Moving Toward 5000

Underrepresented Graduate Students.

Project 1000, as it is

popularly known, is based at

Arizona State University in

Tempe, now includes other

minorities -- in addition to

Hispanics -- who are considered

"underrepresented."

Since its founding in 1989, the program, whatever

its na e at the time, has helped nearly 3,000 students to

prepare for a d enroll in gradate schools around the

country. The program I s new goal is to enroll 5,000

students as quickly as possible. This past academic

year alone, 400 of 500 students helped by the program

gained admission to graduate

school.

`State of Affairs Worsening'

Although there is still a massive shortage of

underrepresented students at the graduate school level,

particularly Latinos, observers believe the

project has had an appreciable impact in opening up

opportunities for this population.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Education

reports that Latinos make up approximately 10

percent of the U.S. population, but less than 4

percent of the nation's graduate students. Similarly,

African Americans are approximately 13 percent of

the population, yet less than 7 percent of graduate

students. People of color are

close to 30 percent of the

U.S. population, but less than

15 percent of graduate students.

According to an evaluation

report by Project 1000's Executive

Director Gary Keller, and

Director Michael Sullivan, "U.S.

Hispanics are scarcely

represented in graduate education,

and the state of affairs has been

worsening."

Traditionally, all Latinos, except Cuban

Americans, have been severely underrepresented in

graduate schools. Cubans have been less

underrepresented because many of the early

immigrants came from higher social backgrounds and

higher levels of education than other Latinos. The same

has not been true for the later immigrants from Cuba.

Principal Objective

The principal objective of Project 1000 is to

recruit, admit and graduate Latino and other

underrepresented students. With one application,

students are able to apply to seven of the

more than 80 participating colleges and

universities. Participation is free of charge

to both students and the institutions. In

total, the project works with more than

200 educational institutions.

The primary features of the project are:

* bilingual (English/Spanish) academic advisors

that answer questions regarding

the application process and give advice

to ensure turning in the best application

possible;

* on-site recruitment visits;

* financial aid advice;

* free GRE (Graduate Record Examination)

workshops throughout the country; and

* A toll-free telephone number (1-800-327-4893)

with four bilingual advisors available

during work hours.

Busy Number

The students that Project 1000 targets

are Latinos from poor backgrounds, says

Sullivan, and from all fields -- except law,

medicine and business. Currently, Project

1000 has a large pool of students who are not

yet seniors, but who will soon become eligible

for graduate school. The project, which spends

$50,000 per year on 800 advisement calls,

handled more than 6,000 calls last year, with 53

percent of them from this not-yet-eligible pool.

The 800 number is a critical project

component, says Sullivan. Without it, students

generally would apply to only one or two

graduate schools, says Sullivan. Students who

take that route get turned down two-thirds

of the time, he says, adding that applying to

multiple schools and receiving solid financial aid

offers beats those odds. Doing this without

Project 1000 assistance would require a lot more

time and money on the part of the student.

Variety of Backgrounds

The Mexican Americans the project

recruits "are children of migrant workers

and urban kids, not the children of

professors," says Sullivan. Many have attended

community colleges.

"We're the proudest in terms of the work

we've done at recruiting Puerto Rican students,"

he says. Those from the island are from the

rural and mountain areas,

while those from the states are low-income,

inner-city students.

A fair number of Cubans being recruited by

Project 1000 are second generation, but many

are immigrants themselves.

The number of Central Americans is not

huge, says Sullivan. "Our numbers are higher

than the national norm, but there's a lag because

a lot of the immigrants who fled the civil wars in

their home countries in the 1980s did not have a

lot of schooling. They were adults without a lot

of education and a lot of children. Given time,

we'll get more [of them] to apply,"

Sullivan says that a project requirement is

that students be either citizens or permanent

residents. The rationale for this is that Project

1000 does not target students who have received

their education abroad. The objective is to

recruit and increase the number of home-grown

Latinos and other underrepresented groups.

One of the reasons for the distinction is

that in the past, colleges and universities have

counted foreign students and foreign professors

for purposes of affirmative action. "That might

be OK, except that many foreign students and

professors are normally from upper-class

backgrounds, with little in common with Latinos

who were either born or raised in the United

States," says Sullivan.

Perhaps in response to this situation, some

colleges and universities accept applications

from Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans

only -- as opposed to from all U.S.-born or

raised Latinos. The project has discovered

colleges in both Texas and California who do

this, says Sullivan. To be able to accommodate

the large Central American population that has

immigrated to the United States in the past 15

years, colleges are going to have to change, he

says.

New Emphasis

Project 1000 has placed a new emphasis on

recruiting African Americans and Native

Americans that live in the same regions as

Latinos -- including the Southwest, the upper

and lower Rocky Mountain regions and the East

Coast.

The project works with various Native

American, African American and Latino

math/science alliances that fund undergraduate

student scholarships. The alliances also serve as

a pipeline for recruiting them into graduate

schools.

The project, which began as a pilot

program, has turned into a model program, says

Sullivan. "The key to our success is that we look

for the under achievers."

COPYRIGHT 1996 Cox, Matthews & Associates
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group