In Black America; The Graduate Feeder Program with Doctor C.U. Smith

turns. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. I got to call one night at my house from Fred Humpson. He said, see you, they call me, see you.

He said, see you. I want to see if we can do something about this great decline in the production of Black K.C. So we got together and I said, what do you want to do? He said, I want to create a network of institutions that offer the K.C. since BAMU only offers one independent lake and maybe two in conjunction with Florida State Congress and our College of Engineers. I want to see if we can do something about that. I was pretty much looked upset because after all I'm being the graduate school in Florida ML. My job is to build graduate studies here. I need you, President Humpson, to submit to give more money and resources and attention to BAMU. I thought I had a good point, Fred Humpson is, he's a little bit tall now, I'm six, six, six, seven. And so he said, but see you, this is what I want to do. So I have learned over the years and some of you have learned that what you have to do

when you're faced with a situation is change your perspective. Dr. C.U. Smith, Dean, Graduate Studies, Research and Continuing Education, Florida and M University. Last November, Florida and M University held a 12th National Higher Education Conference on Student Retention in New Orleans. The conference brought together some of this nation leading experts on Student Retention. In 1983, Dr. Clanida A. Ford, then Director of the Title III Program at Florida and M, divides a special model for institutional strategies to increase minority student retention. The research has led her to conclude that although many were concerned regarding African-American Student Retention, she couldn't find a national form that addressed a problem. Today, African-American students are attending colleges and universities in greater numbers, but the numbers of students attending graduate and professional schools has not increased. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of in Black America. On this week's program, Florida and M University's Graduate Theater Program with Dr. C.U. Smith

in Black America. So, I began to figure out a way that I could continue to be the graduate dean in Florida and build that, and also direct a program of getting our students to get doctors at other institutions. President Humphrey said, what we can do with BAMU, we can become a national university. Now, at the time, we had about 6,000 students, a little bit of students, and somehow we're going to make a dent in this. So, we met here and I sat down, and we decided we'd pick some schools that we wanted to invite to join this. And so, he picked Tim, the school where he got his PhD, that's number one. That's what number one for me was, Washington State University where I got my PhD. And so, we ended up selecting 15 schools to be invited to come to BAMU at their own expense and to listen to us, tell them and ask them if they would join us in this effort.

There's a large disparity in the numbers and proportions of African-Americans who enrolled in college, and those who graduate, and an even greater difference in those who then go on to enroll in graduate and professional schools. Even today, there are serious problems in the recruitment, enrollment, and retention of African-Americans in higher education in this country. At this year's 12th National Higher Education Conference on Student Retention, the focus on the educational continuum can be gotten to Doctrine, the gap between the proportion of African-Americans with doctorate degrees in this country continued to widen. Ten years ago, Florida A&M University conceived an idea that would put more African-Americans in the pipeline toward doctorate degrees. With the modest beginning of 12 universities, there are now 30 institutions in the Graduate Theater Scholars Program with nearly 200 students per year, they are now seeing the fruits of the program. A substantial number of those students have received their master's degrees, and those receiving professional degrees in law and medicine are increasing, and the number of those

receiving PhD degrees is mounting. At this year's conference, Dr. C. U. Smith, graduate dean of Florida A&M University, shares the formation and success of the Graduate Theater Scholars Program. Of the 15 schools, 12 accepted. I want to tell you about two that did not accept. One was Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and I understood why they did not accept. They said that we can't do that, because what we wanted, we wanted each university to commit to providing solid, full, complete financial assistance to family and students whom we would recommend. Now we are not going to send you any dollars. We are going to send you people who can meet your qualifications. But we want it, we start operating from the top. We got the president, our president spoke to president, and of course this violated the usual procedure going through academic departments and so on.

But MIT said we can't do that, we got to go through our usual procedures to the department chairs and so forth, and have faculty recommendations and furthermore, we can't set aside any money for just one group of black students. University of Chicago said the same thing, that they had to use the traditional methods. I pointed out to them, president, help this one. Look, the usual methods are not working, that's why we have this great decline, we got to do something different. So, one thing about our feeder network was that we started at the top. We worked from the top down. We got the Chief Administrative Officer at the 12 schools that accepted to agree that they would provide three to five financial aid assistance packages for our family students every year. The 12 schools that accepted the invitation were, the University of Pittsburgh, the

campus is on the board of trustees there, Washington State University, I was on the board of trustees, but I was the first black L.E.P.D. and N.E.P., also some people remembered me. Then we got Clark Atlanta, Howard University, we got Mahari, North Carolina State University and where it is. And Florida State University, University of Florida, University of Miami, and I believe the University of Wisconsin and Madison. Those were the 10 that we started with. My associate in court in the program is here, Ms. Linda Hudson, she can correct me if I make any serious mistakes, you don't need to correct me if I make any minor ones. But our argument was that we've got to do something different. And here we are, some of you work at Historical Black Institution, it is very difficult even in 1996 as we close the 20th century for people at predominantly white institutions to think

that you can come up with an idea of what's doing if you're at Historical Black Institution. They think if you could do it better, you wouldn't be at Historical Black Institution. You can't explain. I've dealt with all of my adult career, you can't explain to many people and increasingly you can't explain it to black people who work at a predominantly white school, why you would stay there. Well, I don't stay at Spam, because I'm a missionary. I'm paid pretty well. I mean, I'm not paid as well as I ought to be, but I'm paid a whole lot more than I ever thought I would be. And so, and I had the opportunity to teach at Florida State University for 26 years, 10 where I taught people don't know this as a volunteer, unpaid for 26 years without paid because I believe that the white students and the few black students that Florida State University were entitled to be supposed to black professors.

You know, we look at the world a little differently. We can take the same set of facts and they have different meanings rather than the interiors. The theater program was needed because we felt that the system was not working. And I might say, parenthetically at this point, the state of Florida has 277 Ph.D. programs in its 10 University Network, 277, different ones, but they're not all different. Some of them are the same at different schools, but 277. In 1995, and I got the official figures, that 277 program only produced 4 to 9 black with the Ph.D. You know what? That's not even. That's about 25. One fourth of a black for every Ph.D. program that you hear, I think it's abysmal. I think it's shameful. And I told the chancellor that's why the chancellor doesn't want to speak to me.

He wants to speak to me, but I don't want to speak to him, you know. So the conditions of the FAMU feel the network work, that we wanted you, each institution, to accept from three to five. We tried to be easy to three to five. These five of these financial aid packages, about 75,000 dollars a year, we won't commit it to FAMU. We are going to provide you with the students. FAMU graduates something in the neighborhood of 12 to 1500 students every year. We figured that we can have enough that will qualify by any admissions standards to feel what is there. We ask them do not lower your standards. We ask them to keep your same standards. We don't have people who will qualify. We ask them to provide a faculty representative on the campus for this program. And I might say, I may comment on this a little bit later, but this has been one of the main keys to the success of the program.

You've got to have someone on these campus. There is a Pittsburgh has 34,000 students. Purdue University has 36,000. You've got to have someone in that university who is sufficiently well known and respected. So when that person asks for something, that thing can happen. We, as I said, we got the program approved from the top down. This upset some people, upset my former good friend, John Turner, who is my president of Knoxville College, he was at MIT, and he said, well, you didn't talk to me about this. I said, no, we weren't talking to you. You were an assistant to the associate dean. You know, we went to the head man. And he was angry because I violated his protocol. Well, he's at Knoxville now, and I think he's happy. We also insisted that each institution sign a formal agreement. We called it a partnership agreement about what BAM you will do and what you will do.

And these documents are signed by President Humphreys and by either the chief administrative officer of our member institutions or here's our hers designated. We also ask that this representative, Father Peter Network, on that campus, be given money and support to attend an annual conference at Florida NM to evaluate what we are doing to plan for the future and to spend one full day recruiting students. BAM you feeder programs today, and I have a few materials that my erstwhile colleague was still a good friend, Robert Smith, has custody over here. I don't have enough for all of you to have confidence. So what I'm going to ask you to do is to look at them and pass them on that I didn't have the capability this time to do today.

We started with 12. We celebrated our 10th anniversary this past October. We had special people there. We had the president of Howard Universe. We had a new president, Patel Patrick Swyga. That was pretty good president, I find that he has pretty good sense, I might even bring him to Florida any one day. We had Dean of Graduate Studies and Vice President for Research at the Florida Karen Holbrook. We had a fellow named George Jackson from Iowa State University where George Washington Carver went to school and they constitute a very important panel on the call enhancing enrollment of black graduate, black graduate professional students into the 21st century. It was one of our 10th anniversary features. I might say also that we have learned how to do things that Florida and what I call the FAM U-Way Robert knows the FAM U-Way that we want to do it a little better. So we don't serve any continental breakfasts anymore.

That's food that will kill you, it's all sweet stuff, you know, the food is okay, but all those rolls and jelly and butter and stuff. So what is it? We simulate a regular hotel under brunch for our breakfast. We have a food service and we give them instructions so they set up and you have omelettes prepared to order. You can just in two chefs cooking these things as you would and all of this stuff, the e-tum is not too good for you but it's good and we always teach you grit, you know, so that they can feel comfortable. Wyatt was very enamored of the grit. He said, I won't leave grits, but don't you tell anybody in the back in Washington that I was down here eating grits. Today at FAM U, at the feeder program, Robert has a sheet and they're called the Feedback. It's a newsletter, we created a newsletter about four years ago, it's called Feedback. The name I invented out of, in fact it's a feeder program and it gives you information

on what's happening, you know, just pass some of those, let's distribute some of those. And we've published this twice a year, Ms. Linda Hutton is the editor of it. I usually write a column about something that I hope is significant. You can look at it and pass it on. We have that. Today we have 31 institutions, 31 and the other young ladies at the table, if you're looking at you, you'll see a map that has some spots on it, she's right there, without a stack. We have a map coming around that shows the states where these 31 institutions are located. The significant thing about these, we only invite it, 15, 12, except it. All the other institutions that have joined our network have asked to do so. We have not solicited any, they have asked to join.

And I want to, I think we're almost have enough, President Humphers wants as many as we can get. Ms. Linda is probably tired of, I'm going to tell you about what she does in a minute, but 31 institutions, up from 12. We now include law and medical schools in the network. We have at this moment, I believe, 19 spam youth graduates in law schools at the University of Florida alone. And the reason is that faculty rep down that understands the programs and the president, somebody from Florida has endorsed it all the way down. We have at last count 250 students out in these member institutions over the country. Those are the ones we know about. Now some students go and some have gotten mastery, have lots of masters degrees. We, our main thing is to encourage them to go all the way for the PhDs. We now have since, in the 10 years, we've begun to see the results.

We're beginning to make a little dent. We have 12 persons who have received the PhD degree in this program. My goal is, is that we will have, I want us to have at least five per year, the five lakhs getting the PhD, of course, in between we'll have many getting the masters degrees. My university, Washington State University, is 4,000 miles from Tallahasseh. And it gets cold out there. It took six years for us to get the first student from FAMU to decide the goal to watch the state had to tell them about the cold and tell them that all they needed was a coach. That in Florida, it's hot. And I don't know how you know this, but whether it's hot, you can take it off on your

clothes, you're still hot. But if you're in the cold climate, you put on the clothes, you can be warm. So, once we got the first one there, we've had Steve Burkett, my colleague and sociologist in the faculty rep that all these years, we got the first one. Incidentally, it was a woman, going out to get the PhD I believe in political science. And she has gotten the PhD now. But she went. And once we got the first one, who could send the words back that you don't die out there, another thing I did was I got a beautiful picture of Washington State University's campus. It's a beautiful school, tremendous place to study. You know why? Because there's nothing else to do there. But it's a tremendously looking school, and we got the first one. Today, we've had two persons, an incidentally dork of McCoy, who got the first PhD there, had so many job offers and so many speaking engagements.

I couldn't get her to come back to speak to the theater conference. She's too busy for me. I didn't point out how nasty that was to us to do that to us. Today, I was at Washington State about two months ago, and we have seven students there now. One is finishing his PhD. We have two or three others at the point of candidacy. And one of them that was so good that they decided to stop her from school and hire her full time in the development office. I asked her, when is she going back to school? She said, soon, she interrupted her career to find a fiancee and started a family. But that's all right. Purdue, you'll go back, she's that good at Washington State University. The president's name is Sam Smith. He's about this tall, you know, about where this is. But they still think I'm something to watch and say, but Sam Smith has told me in the presence of Linda, sitting in his box at the football game, I don't know where you won that game

at that night, but he said that we will take care of any students whom you send to Washington State. So we have the flow, we have the street. Purdue University. You know, I didn't know Purdue was a big school. I thought it was just a little bit of school. I realized that this is the state land grant university, it's a monster thing. Yeah, monster, but the president is same size as Sam Smith. His name is President Bearing, but I had lunch with President Bearing, because the attempts for me to come out there, they got to the point where they're trying to persuade us to bring them to them. And of course, it's not easy. East Lafayette is about like Pullman Washington, there's absolutely nothing there. It's not the university, but I had lunch with him and he told me in the presence of his minority coordinator, he said that we will fund every student whom Sam you send. And Purdue probably has done more to get students interested because it has a visitation program.

And every year, they invite students to come and they pay for them. But that's two weeks ago, I think 12 students from BAM, you visited Purdue, they gave them planes tickets, they picked them up at the airport, they take care of them, they showed them the school, and I don't know how many students we have there now. The University of Florida does some of the same thing, they have a visitation program. Now all of these things have developed as we have progress. We now have, when the first started, I had to do most of the stuff. I had to drive the van, you know, go to the airport, pick up people, do all these logistical things, which I can do. But President Humphrey has decided that he's going to make this big time. So for the last four years, we have had a full-time coordinator, Ms. Linda Hudson. And then would you stand up back there, she coordinates the program out of our office.

This program, and it's full-time, it's funded, it's merit, merit still here, Title III, was funded by Title III Fund from the High Education Act in 1965. And the budget that's given for this is about $70,000 from our school. Now I want you to think about that because what do we get out of this? I'm concerned about graduate studies, what do we get out of this doing all this work? Linda, in this network, we have to, what we do, you see the application nomination form, every student is nominated. You have to be recommended by some counselor, some instructor, some professor who has taught you, who knows about your performance because we don't want, we don't want to get messed up with it. So we have a simple form, you know, yes, this. One paper, not all this stuff, you have to fill out for financial aid, you know what, this long thing to have is financial aid because they don't want to give you the money,

they make you fill out the form because the figure will get discouraged. We don't want the people to be discouraged. We have this form on NCR paper, and we send this form, a copy of this form, for every student nominated to every member of our feeder network. So we have 100 students that we are sending out in this batch. We have 100 of these forms, multiplied times 31, which means our copying machine just runs out all the time. It's just a massive job of collation and cost money. And we operate from FAMU with a centrifugal force, that is, we're pushing them out. We ask the universities to operate, I believe I've got this right, in physics, centripetals to pull them in, sometimes students don't, they don't have a good sense of what they involved in, they don't want to meet deadlines, they haven't had to do these things like this before, because all of you know that the national signing day for graduate students is about like the one for football, it's April 15th, just like income tax, just remember,

that if your students are not in the predominantly white application network by April 15th, you probably not going to get too much, except that we do have the commitment, but we don't want our students to violate the procedures too much. So the processing, the labor from our small office is tremendous, but we do it. Now what do we get out of this? All I can say is that we get the satisfaction of knowing that FAMU is trying to make a difference. I flew back, I was at Pullman Washington, I was being installed as a newly elected member of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation, which they won't money, wasn't the Board of Regents, but the Foundation, but I was being instructed, inducted at the time that our annual conference was coming up, I flew back all night long, you ever try to go from Pullman Washington, to Seattle Washington, to Salt Lake City, to Salt Lake City, they closed the airport, they said it's 10 o'clock at night, and it's nothing to do but wait

out there. And from Salt Lake City, to Atlanta, from Atlanta to town, I could be back in town, I had this to help open our theater conference. Now I'm not trying to say this to glorify me, but I believe in the program, I believe in graduate education, and I believe that I have this obligation, that so the satisfaction comes from knowing that we are trying to make a difference. If by 1996, 1997 we have $1,930,000 that is administered for citizenship and fellowship and fee waivers directly through my office. Now graduate dean, as I told some people this morning, doesn't have much power. He or she has to do things by influence, by persuasion. But I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that if you have nearly two million dollars in financial assistance available through your office, you can get some of our 12 colleges and schools pay attention to you, you say, well, I want you to do this, will you do that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, see, what else you want me to do? Now, match this graph, or compare it with the next one, if I can find it, that's the financial aid, here's enrollment. Look at how similar they are. What does that, I don't, I can't draw the conclusions that Dr. Gardner drew, but I can, I don't have to be to know regression analysis, to know what this means. I don't have to have any pills on this product moment, or do I need to have any analysis of various encover, little financial aid is what is making this happen. Dr. C. U. Smith, graduate dean, Florida and M. University, we will conclude Dr. Smith's address on next week's program. If you have a question or comment or suggestions after the future in Black America programs, write us.

Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. I would like to thank Florida and M. University for their assistance in the production of this program. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer David Elvarez, I'm John El Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America Cassettes. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John El Hanson, Jr.

Join me this week on in Black America. But I can assure you ladies and gentlemen that if you have nearly two million dollars in financial assistance available to your office, you can get some of our 12 colleges and schools pay attention to you. Florida and M. Graduate Scholars Feeders Program with Dr. C. U. Smith this week on in Black America.