ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences

Transcription

[ Music ] >> I am delighted to be here, and it's wonderful today meeting with a variety of people from [inaudible] core, I met the faculty and staff at lunch and what's most important to me is when I get a chance to come through campus and give my impressions about their institution and hear what they think of themselves, and so one of the questions I asked throughout the day was, "Tell me your perceptions about God." What language do you use? How would you like to be viewed? That kind of thing, so as I talk today about innovation and inclusive excellence and leadership, I want to leave a lot of time so that we can have an exchange; I begin with words from one of your former presidents who was a dear friend, a mentor of mine, Jeff Frequent. It turns out that Jim and I both worked with new college presidents for years as something in our program, and at one point when he retired, he recommended me to conduct his seminar on the academic role of the president, and I've been grading that for perhaps a dozen years. And I always begin those sessions -- and they're always 50-75 new presidents in the room with a quote from Jim, and how many of you were here when he spoke at the last commencement? His last commencement was in 1998, how many of you were here? You'll appreciate this. This is from that commencement address in June of 1998. He was talking about a liberal education, which he called, "The surest source of a satisfying life." He said, "A liberal education that lasts a lifetime will inspire you to strengthen the foundation of your moral identity, and to explore the ordeal of being human, the drama of confronting the darker side of the self, the responsibility of imposing meaning on your life and society, the challenge of transcending the ambiguity-entangled counsel of arrogance and modesty, egotism and altruism, emotion and reason, opportunism and loyalty, individualism and conformity." And from another talk that he gave, that I continue to think about, he says in a piece on idealism and a liberal education, a couple years before that, "There are few golden ages, there is only the timeless continuity, the halting tempo of challenge and response. I have been ever-cognizant that colleges maintain their standing in society only by a persistent effort, decade upon decade to deepen our understanding of ourselves and to explore the most distant horizons of knowledge. I find those words inspiring as I begin -- as I talk about innovation and inclusive excellence, what you have that I think makes you a model for educating students and for what we think about as the best of American higher education is this combination of a research environment, the faculty who are publishing and the grants, almost $200 million in grants that's all, coupled with an emphasis on students, and particularly undergraduate students. We expect research institutions to care about doctoral students, but as many of you know very few institutions have thought through what it means to care and to really support undergraduates and to pull the undergraduates into the research. So it wasn't surprising to me as people talked they would mention both things, the fact that you have first-rate faculty and committed staff, and that you have really talented undergraduates who get a chance to get involved in the research. Every person has a story. Now, this in New England, and I am from Baltimore, which I would call the upper south. One day we're like Philadelphia, the next day we're like Richmond. It depends on the issue, like the Civil War, all right? But I grew up, as some of your colleagues here, in the Deep South, in Alabama, where we know exactly who we are. We are Southern, and in the South -- in the Deep South we love stories. And I begin, really, with a story, a very brief story that speaks volumes about my own childhood. You're celebrating the fortieth anniversary of some very special events in your history involving the emphasis on Native Americans, the black alumni association, really, one of them co-ed education, and I'm in the process this year of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Children's March in Birmingham. And it was in this year that I was a little 12-year-old in the ninth grade and had no idea -- a little fat kid, loving math, loving to eat and math, those were my two loves, had no idea that I would hear this man talking about the opportunity to go to better schools, and that we'd stop using hand-me-down books if we just participated in this march to show America that we knew we deserved a better education. I had no idea I'd spend a week in jail, had no idea that I'd get a chance to work and bring and take little kids to jail, but the experience, it was quite an experience. I was afraid -- I was as afraid, I was not a courageous kid, but I was this fat little kid loving math, remember that. But I wanted to see what the white kids were getting in their schools because we'd always been told their schools were so much better. And we knew the books we got and the things we got tended to be already used by others. And so I was willing to do it. And what the experience taught me has really shaped my philosophy about educating young people. It taught me that even children really can think well, and if you empower them to understand their circumstances, whether they're 12 or young people of 18, quite frankly they can do amazing things, they absolutely can. And that experience from age 12 has shaped what I think in many ways. When I think about innovation, and inclusive excellence, several things come to mind. Number one, innovation has everything to do with being able to look at the situation as it is, and to think about what you'd like it to be. And that means for me being able to look in the mirror at the institution, for example my own, UMBC, as we have done over the years and to see the good, the bad and the ugly. To see what's challenging and what's good. To appreciate the strengths but to say, "This is where we are, but this is where we want to be." And I know that you're going through the same strategic planning process right now, and you know I've heard people say and I've read this that when you think about the master plan, the strategic plan, it really is about what you want to become. When you think about your culture it really is who you are. Your culture has everything to do with the questions you ask and the ones you don't ask, those things that you really value, what you highlight, the achievements you talk about, those you may not have thought about, the values that you hold. Important will all be your culture. And I would argue that as we think about innovation in higher education, we have to look at the culture of every institution to appreciate what is significant there. For you, clearly, attracting and supporting first-rate faculty, doing the research, and looking at teaching and learning, working to help undergraduates become the best that they can become. When I asked a number of your alumni from around the country as I was going to be coming here, and others who just knew about you, what they thought, about Dartmouth, it was a very positive picture, of course, a positive one because it's a challenging place. It's a place with very high academic standards, and yet as I've said to people today, one of the points made was that there is some indication that you have a lot of undergraduates that spend quite a bit of time having a party. And that doesn't mean they aren't serious, but the question of the balance between the intellectual side and the party side is an interesting one for you, and it's one that people are aware of, and yet people talk about the undergrad experience here, and there are those who would say let undergraduates be undergraduates and just have a good time. There are others who would say it could be a more serious place for undergraduates, as you think about it. And you determine whether or not, to what extent that is the case, I tell it to you because innovation involves hearing what may not be as the best of what you want it to be because there's no way you can improve if you don't say where you are right now. And we've gone through that same experience and many institutions would say exactly the same thing. Well, last night, and I said this to several people, you should say it, I got out of my car at the hotel, at the inn, and it was clear that there were some guys last night who had been drinking and had having a good time. And they were very loud and I just listened and I thought to myself -- this is Monday night. I'm not sure this is the best thing for them to be doing on a Monday night. And I did something that was really interesting: I called one of my colleagues who was on campus and I said, "Go around and see if there are any kids out there drinking right now on a Monday night, and tell them to go to their rooms and study or something." [Laughter] and I tell you that because it could happen on anybody's campuses, but it is symbolic of a challenge that we all have in higher education as we think about issues of drinking, as we think about what happens in the middle of the week, as we think about this relationship between the serious and the other side, and I think what makes you particularly unique is that the population is a manageable one in terms of the number of undergraduates. You do care about undergraduates in a way that liberal arts colleges do, this is one of the best things about liberal arts colleges is just that, the nurturing, the development of those undergraduates, and the other part that's significant to me is that you can pull them into the work, into the intellectual life. And I'm sure as you go through the planning, as I talked to people today I was very impressed by the authenticity of people across the campus in saying, "Yes we are very good in many ways," you are top-ranking in undergrad teaching and yet you know success is never final. And I'd like to talk about a part of what we've done and some of those challenges. But I want you to think about this one question: You attract some of the best-prepared students in the world. You have some of the best faculty. The questions is, what can you say about the graduates as they cross the stage? About their values, about their interests in helping others, about the kinds of leaders they're going to be? Because you are preparing those who will be among the most elite in our society, and I think it gives you a wonderful opportunity, but an awesome responsibility as you think about your graduates who will lead the nation in many ways. We think that same way. That we've got this responsibility not simply to give them skills, but to help them think about their view of the world, their relationship to others around the world, and particularly to people who have not had the privileges of my middle class population, of your apparently very-wealthy population. Not all, but clearly you are some of the most privileged -- your students, in the world. And you are fortunate to be in this setting and I commend you. I simply say to you what I say to my colleagues: What's our responsibility? How do we think about the Dartmouth education, the UMBC education? I come from a campus that has students from 150 countries. Make no mistake about it, the students who come from other countries tend to be far more disciplined than American students. Far more disciplined -- whether they're from Nigeria or Russia, China or Barbados, they're hungrier for the knowledge. And we have focus groups -- one of my messages to you today as you think about innovation and looking in the mirror and this notion of inclusive excellence has everything to do with, "How do we help students from all racial and ethnic backgrounds not simply to graduate, not simply to survive, but to excel?" To excel, how do we set the bar so high for all groups? And then for ourselves in such a way that we create or reshape the teaching and learning environment to ensure that as many students as possible will learn the right habits of mind, who will appreciate what it means to talk about an active life of the mind. We have worked for years at UMBC to say nothing is more important than intellectual pursuits. That it should be a campus where the life of the mind is very active, and quite frankly a place where it's really cool to be smart. Smart meaning excitement about ideas, smart meaning really excited when you're publishing in a refereed journal, or about the two undergrad journals we have on campus, or about a serious play. I said today to some of your colleagues that we're strong in science and engineering, but we're also strong in arts and humanities, we're just -- I was touring your arts facility, a wonderful facility by the way, I was taking pictures, I always like taking pictures to show people things but we just, we've just really pushed the gap and we're in the process of finishing our $170 Million dollar arts and humanities building. Just building excellence in those areas too, and we don't do -- we do serious theatre. Beckett is our muse. We are a dark campus, we really are. You go to a production you're either depressed or you're angry. You never leave theater at UMBC happy, I promise you that. Wait a minute, the students, the serious ones -- Beckett, we talk Beckett a lot, and across, so whether it's science or theatre, you've got students in interesting places around the campus talking about ideas. That didn't just happen. Years ago my students of Asian descent tended to be working in groups, and my black and white students tended to be talking about the party from the night before. And we were determined to change that, to turn that around. And one of the things we did was to help American students look at and think about how people from other parts of the world view their education. I'll never forget having a focus group and we had students from Russia, from China, from New York, from DC, and a young woman from Jamaica and it was very clear that the students who had spent most of their lives in other countries and came here when they were 13 or 14 or whatever were just more serious about the work, a little more intense, and I was trying to understand why there were these differences. And one of the students from Jamaica said, "I don't mean to insult my American friends, but it seems to me that middle-class Americans go to college thinking that it's Grade 13. It is the next thing you do. So for you -- " She looked at her friends, her American friends, she said, "This is just the icing on the cake." She said, "But for me, if I don't excel, my younger brothers and sisters may not eat. So it's not the icing on the cake, it's the very bread of life. That's what education is." And it was -- there was this moment of goose bumps, because she almost -- she literally almost brought people to tears because it was for her so serious that she should work to be the very best. And that moment was an exciting one because it sparked great conversation about how we view education. Why is it important to go to college? Is it simply about getting a job and making money? Is it about much more than that? Is it about one's sense of moral identity? And it was fascinating that we continue to have those conversations, and one of my recommendations to places that are working on innovation is to not only have faculty and staff thinking about who you are, your culture and what you want to become, but to have those conversations with students, undergraduate and graduate students, and to listen to the voices of those students. It's amazing how much I have learned over the years. I want you to think about it. First of all, much of what I say today can be found in the articles, if you go to my webpage you'll see a number of articles that a research team and I have worked on for years regarding our culture and what has made the difference. We decided some years ago that we could be much better than we were. That while the best students, often students who had some international background and a few others were doing well, and everyone knew if you wanted to go to med school in my state we were one of the places you'd come to, it was very clear that minority students -- particularly underrepresented black and Hispanic were not doing well. And we decided to experiment, to start a program, the Meyerhoff program, with the idea that we wanted to find the best prepared students we could find in our state, be first in our state, and see if we gave them support how well they could do. I went around the country looking for one institution, predominantly white institution that was producing even five black kids a year who get PhDs. Could not find one, in the nation. And what I found as I went to a lot of the Ivies, a lot of the kids who started off in pre-med and changed to pre-law, business or whatever. And I should tell you my report from the National Academy of -- If you look at the report on underrepresentation in science, that came out in the last year with people from Harvard and MIT, [inaudible] which is one of the Texas Institutions, what we saw was it isn't surprising that only 20% of African-Americans and Hispanics begin with a major in science or engineering or graduate in those areas. It is stunning that only 32% of whites who begin with a major in science or engineering graduate with a bachelor's in science and engineering, and only 42% of Asian-Americans. Now the first response is, "Students aren't well-prepared." Well, that is true for some, but other researched showed the committee this: The higher the SATs, and the larger the number of AP credits in some areas, and the more selective the university, now listen carefully because this is counterintuitive -- and the more selective the university, the greater the probability the student regardless of race who begins in science will leave it within a year or two. Now, usually students will say, "Well, I liked something else better." Well, if you get an A in something else and a C or D in science of course you like it better! [Laughter] and if you've been valedictorian in your high school, you're not going back and saying, "I didn't do well in science," we said this -- I said this to all of the institute directors at NIH. And I said, jokingly with my lawyer friends, and many who start off pre-med become great lawyers. That's the big joke, except it's true, it really is. And the lawyer for NIH came out afterwards and she said, "I went to the most selective of all, valedictorian, perfect SAT and you just told my story." And she said, "I've always been embarrassed to admit it." If you talk to American audiences and you ask them the question, "How many of you know someone who started off in pre-med, engineering or any of those areas who changed their major?" Everybody raises a hand. They do. And the point I made to NIH is this: We're working to get the American public to be more appreciative of the value of science in our society, to be more supportive of congress giving more money for stem cell research in other areas. If even the highest achieving Americans in large numbers don't have successful experiences in science, why would we expect the average American to be appreciative of the need to support science? And so, starting with the idea of wanting our country to invest in science research and stem areas, whether talking about for healthcare or for energy and environmental or for intelligence and defense, it seems to me for the good of the country, we need to think about the culture of teaching and learning in science and engineering. NSF calls the first year of stem across institutions, two-year and four-year institutions, and "weed-out courses." It's just accepted. Now I've worked with some of the best liberal arts colleges in New England, with presidents and deans of science, and I always say to them, "You don't expect the majority of your students who start in the first year of science to go to the second year," and they would say, "Why would you say that?" I say this: go back and look at the first year, whatever that is, for your campus, the first year, the number of seats, and then look at the number of seats in the second year group. There is a big reduction because the assumption is a certain percentage will leave. Now I want to really commend a faculty member here today, his name is John Cool, he may not be here now, but John said no campus -- I said -- here's the question. What's the probability of a student at your institution who begins in science graduating with a bachelor's in science? And this was the first place I came -- I've been to 50 or 60 institutions in the past few years where he could show me a chart where he had actually worked on the data himself to collect it. It was very impressive that he had done that. Then I said, "now the next question is, if they graduated in science, did they at least have a B average in the science courses?' Because you can't get into grad school or think about med school if you don't have at least B's in those courses -- it's not enough to have a 3.0 overall, med schools, grad schools will look at research you've done, but they're also going to look at the grades. clearly, and they want at least a B average in those courses, you see, and so he was going to go back and do that, but at least he was looking at that, and the point I'm making with all of that is this: that any campus that is serious as we have to become, about helping students in general to succeed in science, needs to understand how students are doing by race, by gender, by ethnicity and by discipline. Because what happens in one discipline, biology, may be different from what happens in mechanical engineering or what happens in computer science and it's a challenge for minorities; it's a challenge for women in many areas, but it's a challenge for whites in general. And so across this country the result is this: only six percent of the degrees of the bachelor's degrees in America are in natural sciences and engineering. And this is for a 24-year-olds, we're talking about those with a degree, 6%. In Europe it's almost 12%, and in some of the Asian countries much higher than that. Computer science is one of the most glaring examples of a challenge we face: according to the National Science Foundation, we have a shortage of about 50,000 bachelor's degrees in computer science per year right now. And the head of computer sciences, computational sciences for NSF says this: "the problem of underrepresentation" -- meaning if you look at women and people of color and people with disabilities, you're talking about 70% of the population, so he said this: "The problem of under-productivity of degrees is inextricably linked to the problem of underrepresentation." You can't get there in America unless we find ways of increasing the number of women and people of color in computer science, as an example. And so what we work to do on our campus is to find ways to see how we might improve performance. And here are some of the lessons. Building community among the students makes a big difference. Getting away from the cutthroat attitude that I can't tell you what I know because then your school would be higher than mine so each of us will say we're doing okay. If you asked any student on your campus or mine at midterms, "how are you doing in a certain class?' Whether that student got a D or an A the students' going to say, "I'm okay." Nobody's going to come out and say, "I bombed out." It's just not the culture of any place I've met. You know, people just don't tell strangers, or anybody as a rule how they've done. And yet, you know this if you're in some areas if you earn below a B, especially if you earn below a C at the midterm point, for a calculus course, for a physics course, a chemistry course, it's probably over for the semester, because one thing builds on another. So if you've done poorly on the first half, you don't have the foundation to build on for the second half. You're just struggling trying to make it. And so the real question becomes, and what we had to work on, was how to help students improve on those first year courses. We started by academic support for those students, building communities among the students, working to see if we could get them to at least B's in the courses, and number two getting them immersed in laboratories. I don't think there's anything I can say that's more important than this about culture of science and teaching and learning: it takes researchers to build researchers. It can't be staff. It has to be the people who are most powerful in the academy: the faculty. It takes researchers. And we wanted faculty who were tenured and who were the very best to be involved. And we were able to get some of them to start looking at these issues of performance, and, quite frankly, getting students immersed in the labs, and so our Howard Hughes investigator Mike Summers, we still have the only Howard Hughes Investigator for publics -- the medical school just got one, the Maryland Medical School just got one, Harkness has a number as you might expect, but this guy, Mike Summers, Howard Hughes Investigator about chemistry, has been involved now for almost 20 years in producing these students and helping get other faculty involved in that work. And I bring that up for this reason: We were -- with small numbers at first, we started with 19 young people and then every year we had 20-25, and so people were saying that those numbers wouldn't make a difference in the problem, the problem for minorities, only about 2% of the PhDs in the sciences go to blacks, about 2% to Hispanics. Put the two together it's not quite 5%. yet we're talking about that population -- Hispanics being the fastest-growing, you put the Hispanics and blacks together you're going to be in the next 10-15 years about 40% of the population. So the key is how do we get more students in science and engineering? I was saying to Carol under 1% of the scientists at NIH are black, of the tenured scientists, under 1%. And you go to any of the institutes and it's about like that. So it's a major problem in American society for competitiveness, and the key is this question of how do we increase those numbers? Well, you start by seeing what works. I also suggested to Dartmouth, to some of your colleagues today, if you were producing three blacks a year who went on and got PhDs, you'd be in the top 10-15 predominantly white campuses in the country. That's how small the numbers are. We became the leading predominantly white institution, and we were up through 2006 to about five a year, we've now hit a stride we're up to 12-15 year who actually complete PhDs at Harvard, and Stanford at the best of places, and MD PhDs. And that's about changing the culture. People will often say, "Well, minorities are always going to go to med school." Well, it's, it always depends on what they understand. And of course we need more physicians, but we have really emphasized the importance of research and PhDs. And so my Howard Hughes Investigator, white guy, wonderful man who is producing all these PhDs in biochemistry and sending other kids on, will speak to a group of families of high-achieving minority students, and he'll give the [] points about if you're black, or you're Hispanic, or you're a woman or over 55, your probability of getting diabetes is two to three times that of the white population, he goes through those and then he says this: If your students, who are the best prepared, among your races, if your children don't take on this battle, who do you expect to do it? It's a powerful argument, it really is, and when people understand that the significance of the research is that PhDs help people they may never see, there's something very noble about that work, and people become amazed at the possibilities. But they need to be exposed, because most have just never known a PhD. They've always thought a real doctor means MD. And we need MDs too, but the idea -- so we've become the leading producer of black MD PhDs also. And here is the point: people were concerned about our small numbers at first, but even after 10 years that was a statistic that shocked the scientific community. It turned out that about 10 years ago, 10-12 years ago, there were only 67 blacks in the country who earned bachelors in biochemistry, only 67. 22 came from my campus, and they all went to grad school, and the weakest just went just for MD. It's harder to get a PhD, and most people don't realize that -- than an MD. MD you're in you're out. If you're good you can do it. PhD you don't know when you're going to graduate. You know and families always say, aren't you finished yet? And you tell them you don't have results and they go, mm-hmm, you know, they go "There's something wrong," when there may not be anything wrong, and that's in social sciences or in sciences. You just don't know. But if you're not from that culture, you're thinking oh, something must be wrong. I have a student here who was one of my -- Miles, who's here in med school, he's saying, "I'm going to add that next to the grid, I'm excited," and there were some students in the back and they heard him say, "MBA," and I'm like, "that's okay," but on the outside he's adding on the PhD. Get the MBA, but get the PhD. You're good enough you can do it, and the point I'm making is a part of changing the culture involves having people understand why it's important to think about grad school. You're not doing it for money, of course you're going to make a decent salary but you're doing it because you can change the world. And it's amazing how establishing that as a value makes a difference. So we're not at over 40% of our undergrads of all races going to grad school from science and engineering all the way over to the humanities, to classical studies. We've got one of my top kids is now assistant professor of classics at Columbia. So the idea is getting them involved in the research. But for minorities, that group work made the difference and here's the point: it worked so well for my minority students that my white students said, "We want the same thing." And that has really transformed the campus in the past 10 years, because faculty began -- not all, just some, began saying, "Well suppose we decided to redesign the first year of chemistry." Because what we've done -- my students get the fives on AP exams, but in certain areas we've said, "You're better off for the most part if you stop at the first course." Just because, I mean, if you know AP calculus A, B and C, it's all formulaic. It's very different than what you get. So when you start at that next level, we've done the analytics, which is another theme, it's disaggregating the data. It's using analytics. It's analyzing the trends for different groups. I can tell you that only 20% of my students who get fives on AP A, B and C who start with calc three will get an A. I can tell you 40% will get a C or below. So having students understand, "Maybe you're better off not starting at that higher level," And in chemistry it was worse than that. And so what's interesting is that these are kids who have AP, fives on AP exams, some of the schools in the Washington area are very strong public schools. You've got kids who would have gotten fives on AP chemistry in tenth grade, who worked in labs involving NIH since the tenth or eleventh grade, now they're in that first-year chemistry too, so that competition is stiff, but still half the students were flunking the course -- D's and C's. And so it was wonderful when faculty said, "Let's see if we can change our attitude about this, and let's figure out what it would take to have a higher percentage doing well," doing well being defined as "at least a B." Because if you're going to major in the discipline you need to have at least a B, usually, and we redesigned chemistry, if you look on the webpage at the chemistry discovery center you will get a feel for what we do. We work in groups, we assign them randomly. We don't give them the theories they have to really struggle to determine the theories. We use problems out of some of the biotech companies on campus, and part of our innovation effort has involved over the past 20 years, encouraging faculty to work with agencies to start companies, and so we have 85 companies, biotech and IT companies on campus. Some focus on intelligence and cyber security, others in biotech, but we've used a lot of the problems from those companies as students begin working in internships. But the key is that students can't be laid back and just take notes, they are involved as a project manager, they're a blogger, they've got roles that they play, and they're using the technology. They have to collaborate, we use the blackboard system not simply for course management, but in helping them to talk constantly when they're not in class, and the result has been a 50% increase in students who are earning at least a B. Since the early 2000's we've gone, I looked at it today, we've gone from about 350 majors in biochemistry and chemistry to 650 with the enrolment not changing that much. And we can now say to our legislature, every time a student doesn't retake a course, we save $1700, quite frankly. And we had large numbers retaking courses regularly. So that led to -- now, the first thing some of my colleagues said was, "Well that's because it must be an easier course." So we had ACS, American Chemistry Society, come in and evaluate -- it's actually more rigorous than the other type. That once you show the analysis that the rigor is there and there's a different way, more people become involved and say, "Let's look at the next level." So they're now looking at the second level of chemistry, but we've now done the same thing in other areas, and the innovation has to do with people saying, "How might we do it differently?" So if you know the Nexus Project from Howard Hughes right now, this next experiment in undergrad science, we are doing it, we are infusing mathematics into biology. Purdue I think is doing, is integrating biology and chemistry. Miami is looking at the life of physics there are five institutions creating modules that we can all use, and they're these faculty from biology and chemistry and physics are looking at ways of integrating the work. One campus is doing case studies -- and this is all based on the 2009 report on the future of medicine. And so again, the idea of using reports, working with other campuses to rethink coursework, the same thing we're doing with Gates, with the Kaufman Foundation for us leveraging resources. And what this theory of change that we talk about in one of my articles is about -- has to do with leveraging resources, having a vision of self. For us it's about a place where students can come with the highest possible standards where it really is a tough place, but a caring place, where excellence is what we're expecting, the highest possible standards and partnering with other institutions. So we have an engineering research center with Princeton, where students are going back and forth. We do a lot with Hopkins, as you might expect, we just redid our first-year statistics course for non-math majors with Carnegie Mellon's program with the Ithaca Study, and we are able to show the effectiveness of it, so blended instruction, use of technology, collaboration, groups. And it's worked so well instead, we've now moved it to the other disciplines. So we now have Linnihan-Otte scholars, Dreschler Humanities Scholars, some applicable affairs scholars, and other communities within, because we found that building communities of students can help them connect in a way intellectually that leads to their thinking about the person they want to be. It worked so well with students, that we used that same notion of community in the advanced project, advanced to increase the number of women faculty in science. Some of you know that NSF has given out some of these grants and I -- we applied for one and I told the campus I wanted to be the PI. I wanted to show -- make the point that the paucity of women in selected STEM areas is an American issue, not just an issue for women, but for all of us. Just as the issue of minorities -- my faculty are primarily white and Asian. They are not minority. We're working to get a presence of a black, for example, in every department. A Hispanic, and we're still working on it -- an Hispanic. But the key is that we have gone since the early part of the first decade, 2003-4, from 12% faculty women in science and engineering -- now I should tell you. The men on campus, including me, we all said, "We don't have a problem with women, we've got plenty of women in other departments." Well they were wonderful technicians and electorates. They were not tenured or tenure-track faculty. And that was the point women were making, that the culture was such we just accepted the idea that most of the full professors were men, and it wasn't that any of them was a bad person, it is as it is. And that's where innovation comes in. The question is, does it have to be that way? And that was what the advanced program allowed us to do. But we used what we learned with minority students to work on this issue of women faculty, and to work on the paucity of women in computer science. Computer science, of all the disciplines, in STEM for women and people of color, all groups have gone down in recent years, over the past five years in computer science, but women are down for research universities to about 12%, and for the country only 20% of the majors. And so we now have a center for women in IT, it's called CWIT, and again the idea is how do you build the excitement for that and give them the community to support each other since there's only 3 or 4 per class? And it is amazing how -- well, it's the women faculty. We've gone from 12% to 39% at this point with 51% of our assistant professors being women. And that was about changing policies, rethinking the structure and rethinking our attitudes. I don't think anything was more significant than when we had the University of Michigan players in. They do this role playing. They listen to the conversations in departmental meetings and then they take on the roles of different people. It was so embarrassing. It really was. In a good way though. And what we saw though, it was true: when the women said something so often, people go, "uh huh," but nothing changes. The guy says the same thing, and "Oh, it's great idea!" And all of a sudden you change things. Without people realizing it! Just attitudes, it was this very -- and these are all good people. Don't miss my point, these are all people who care about each other. When the woman is saying something and the guy just kind of starts talking and interrupts. And nobody -- so when the players did it people said, "I don't do that." Yeah you do. And it was wonderful to have us looking in the mirror at ourselves. Now the good thing about me was I interrupt everybody, so I wasn't discriminating against men or women so it's just, "You need to shut up and let other people talk," right? But the point I'm making is that for faculty and for students, innovation has meant looking at how we analyze the problem using the data rather than using anecdotal information. Too often we make decisions and draw conclusions in higher education based on anecdotes. The best students go to the best grad schools. You know? Final example was a PhD completion project with a council of grad schools, I was working with some of our colleagues in a couple of the engineering departments, and I wanted to -- we were talking about having this project, and they said, "We don't have a problem with this." And everybody we know graduates. And I said, "No, 50% of the students who start in engineering don't graduate." And they said, "No, it couldn't be." Got a guy who was very passionate, wonderful faculty, and he said, "Listen Freeman, every student I know graduates." And I said, "Yeah, that's the problem. Half the students you just don't know. They slip through the cracks." You get my point? So unless you get the data you just don't make the progress. You know, I want to close with this idea: Aristotle once said that, "Excellence is never an accident. Excellence is never an accident. It is the result of high intention, sincere effort and intelligent execution. It represents making the right choice. It represents choosing from a variety of options." And he finally says this, [background music] "Choice not chance determines your destiny. Choice, not change determines your destiny." And there is our question for Dartmouth, what is it that you choose? Thank you all. [ Applause ]