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  • Resources, Assets, and Strengths among Successful Diverse Students: Understanding the Contributions of the Gates Millennium Scholars Program (Readings on Equal Education, Vol. 23)
  • Laura W. Perna
Resources, Assets, and Strengths among Successful Diverse Students: Understanding the Contributions of the Gates Millennium Scholars Program (Readings on Equal Education, Vol. 23), edited by William T. Trent and Edward P. St. John. AMS Press, Inc., 2008. 286 pp. $137.50 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-404-10123-7.

Resources, assets, and strengths among successful diverse students: Understanding the contributions of the Gates Millennium Scholars Program offers valuable insights for policymakers, administrators, and researchers who are interested in understanding how to improve postsecondary educational attainment of low-income, high-achieving students of color. The volume is edited by two of the nation's foremost scholars on this topic: William T. Trent, professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Edward P. St. John, Algo D. Henderson Collegiate Professor of Education at the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education.

Building on an earlier volume in the Readings on Equal Education series (St. John, 2005), the 11 chapters in this volume examine the contribution of the GMS program to the academic and social experiences of low-income, high-achieving minority students. The final chapter, written by the editors, identifies six "emergent understandings" and four "lessons learned" from the volume. The other 10 chapters are contributed by an impressive group of higher education researchers representing diverse career stages, institutional affiliations, and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Each chapter is grounded in a review of relevant research, includes attention to the source of data and analytic methods, and presents findings, conclusions, and directions for future research.

Although focused specifically on the GMS program, the volume offers insights for other efforts designed to improve the educational attainment of low-income, high-achieving students of color. First, the volume's chapters consistently suggest that addressing the financial needs and concerns of this population increases educational opportunities by, for example, expanding recipients' college choices. By reducing the need to work and consequently increasing the availability of "free" time, addressing students' financial need also appears to promote GMS-recipients' engagement in academic, social, and community activities.

While suggesting the benefits of addressing financial concerns, however, the research design does not control for other explanations for the observed relationships, particularly differences between GMS recipients and non-recipients in the motivation to succeed. The design also does not disentangle the effects on [End Page 116] student outcomes of the GMS scholarship from other program components. Established with a $1 billion grant in 1999 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the GMS program provides financial support for undergraduate and graduate study as well as activities to promote recipients' academic and professional development. In chapter 8, St. John acknowledges and mitigates the selection problem by offering a theoretical rationale for why and how finances are related to students' academic success.

Second, the volume suggests the importance to the academic success of low-income, high-achieving students of color not only of the scholarship component of GMS, but also of other efforts. Trent and co-authors Dawn Owens Nicholson and Mary E. M. McKillip (chapter 1) conclude from their descriptive analyses that the GMS program has effectively reached a population that is infrequently considered: low-income, high-achieving minority students attending majority-minority high schools. Using a two-level hierarchical logistic regression model, Krystal Williams, Shouping Hu, and St. John (chapter 7) show that the college choices of low-income, high-achieving African American students increase with the availability of state grant aid. Drawing on focus group data and her own experiences as a GMS recipient, Malisa Lee suggests the role of mentors in promoting the attainment of low-income minority students. Although the volume gives little attention to the more commonly recognized barriers to attainment associated with inadequate academic and counseling resources in the high schools low-income minority students attend, the descriptive data in other chapters suggest the need to consider how other non-financial forces, including immigration status and family responsibilities, may also influence aid recipients' postsecondary educational experiences.

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