Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future

9. The Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute: A Successful Model for Increasing Minority Representation in the Mathematical Sciences

William Yslas Velez—a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Arizona, a past president of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, and a recipient of a White House President’s Award for his documented efforts to mentor and support minority students—has often challenged elite institutions to find ways of increasing minority representation in the mathematical sciences.1 At Cornell University we have taken up this challenge. In 1996 Velez introduced us to James Schatz, who was at that time the chief of the Division of the Mathematical Sciences at the National Security Agency, and who is now the agency’s deputy director of research. To Schatz, the absence of minority groups of Americans in the mathematical sciences is a matter of national security as well as of deep personal concern . Thus, with the advice of Velez and the encouragement of Schatz, in 1996 Javier Rojo (University of Texas el Paso) and Carlos CastilloChavez drafted a plan for a mentorship model that would be tried at a Hispanic-serving institution. The University of Texas–El Paso, home of Javier Rojo at that time, seemed like the ideal place. We began to plan how to make UT–El Paso a national model for the training of U.S. underrepresented minorities in the mathematical sciences.2 VelezalsointroducedustoHerbertMedina—aprofessorofmathematics at Loyola Marymount University—whose interests in undergraduate 9 The Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute A Successful Model for Increasing Minority Representation in the Mathematical Sciences Carlos Castillo-Chavez and Carlos Castillo-Garsow 136 Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future education and diversity were known to Velez.3 We were now ready to submit a National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal that would support ten students in our undergraduate research experience program in applied mathematics. The summer research experience would be held at UT–El Paso. Unfortunately, the Mathematics Department at UT–El Paso did not find the model compelling. Facing an NSF grant deadline in less than twenty-four hours, we called Cornell University’s provost, Don Randel,4 and requested his support for a version of our effort that included a change in site from UT–El Paso to Cornell. Randel instantly provided the economic support needed to get this project off the ground and had no doubt that our plan would set up a national mentorship model in the mathematical sciences. The Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) was established with the strong institutional support of the Cornell Office of the Provost in 1996. In 2004 MTBI moved to the nation’s largest Hispanic-serving research institution, Arizona State University. The Office of the Provost at Arizona State University and that of its president, Michael Crow, have enthusiastically supported the MTBI program and its expansions. MTBI: A Brief Look at the Numbers Over the course of eleven years the MTBI has mentored, through its sequential summer research experiences, a diverse group of 277 undergraduate and 31 graduate students. This population includes a high percentage of underrepresented U.S. minority students. The MTBI recruits primarily juniors and/or seniors from mostly “nonselective” colleges and universities—students who might otherwise not have considered graduate school as a real possibility for their future. MTBI participants have either a solid, very good, or outstanding academic record. Most if not all applicants have a clear desire to find out what role if any mathematics plays in solving problems of importance to our society. Naturally, mentorship programs that take advantage of the deep social concerns of U.S. minority students are bound to be extremely attractive to students from underrepresented U.S. minority communities. MTBI alumni have contributed to the establishment of successful minority student graduate communities at Arizona State University, Cornell University, and the University of Iowa.5 MTBI alumni have helped the faculty at these institutions establish and maintain a critical mass of U.S. underrepresented minority students in their graduate programs, and has also sent a small number of minority graduate students to such major research institutions as Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford Universities and the University of Michigan. The first “large” crop of MTBI alumni Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute 137 completed their PhDs in the mathematical sciences in 2005, and are now pursuing careers in scientific research—primarily through the postdoctoral route. Their numbers, however small, represent a significant perturbation of the past equilibrium. In 2005, MTBI alumni...