 HBCU Dutchess Radio, welcome back to our HBCU Voices of STEM Excellence series highlighting the best and brightest from historically black colleges and universities throughout the landscape of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics today is a special edition because we have one of the nation's most important figures in the HBCU STEM realm. She is Dr. Claudia Rankin. She is the program director of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities undergraduate program for the National Science Foundation. She is the former dean of Hampton University. Let me make sure I get this title right, Doc. Science and... School of Science. School of Science. She's an elite athlete. She's an elite on Twitter. And Doc, correct me if I'm wrong. You've kind of taken on this unofficial role as not only one of the chief gatekeepers for HBCUs and this sponsored research funding from a major governmental agency, but you're also the big program announcer on Twitter. You have announced major grants over the last weeks and months. Is that... I know you take a lot of pride in doing that. Is that something that you asked for or you just said, screw it, I'm going to do this. I'm going to put this information out there and everybody can see it. I think that in general, what we do at HBCUs in terms of research and innovative ways to educate our students in STEM is not well disseminated. And it's not well disseminated by those within the HBCU community. And I do consider myself part of the HBCU community. Now I'm not black or African-American, but I graduated from an HBCU. I have worked at one for 22 years, so I think I'm not an outsider to HBCUs and I can sort of speak on what it is that HBCUs do really, really well. And you and I have talked before about there are some things HBCUs don't do so well. Obviously we need to every now and then call that out, but we really don't promote enough that HBCU faculty are premier researchers and at the forefront of STEM education reform. So when we see stuff coming out, or this is STEM education reform at these big universities, my colleagues and I sit back and say, we did that 20 years ago. We maybe neglected to put it in the literature, or maybe it was that the literature didn't want to hear from us, that could also be the case. So this whole bias around HBCU faculty not being as productive and competitive as other faculty, that's the narrative I want to dismiss. It's so interesting because there was research that just came out that talked about the explosion of patents that HBCUs have secured over the last eight or nine years. And the amount of grants that you talk about almost on a, if not a weekly, almost a daily basis that are talking about millions of dollars. What is the disconnect between, I guess the general public's broad understanding of, oh, HBCUs are really good at STEM, and then really knowing exactly what we're good at. How do we kind of bridge that gap? Yeah, you know, that's a good question. And I think it probably has to do with, you know, when historically your contributions have been neglected. I mean, when we're looking, for example, at the fact that faculty at Fiske University did cutting edge research in the 1930s, but they couldn't publish in American journals, they had to publish in European journals. You know, that kind of thing doesn't get erased overnight. The fact that HBCU faculty contributions were not accepted in the mainstream journals. So that whole fight to fight for equity, that's just a hard thing to do and a long path. I mean, we're getting there, though. I see from HBCU faculty sort of, in recent years, a surge in publications, in federal funding, in patents, in, you know, marketing, what it is they do. But moreover, what I see also HBCU faculty do is sort of respond to the needs of their students. We don't attract a lot of students in STEM sometimes because students want more than just the scientists. They want to be leaders in their communities and make a difference in the lives of their families and communities. And so I see more people in STEM keating that call from the students and submitting proposals that include both. You know, so for example, funding a proposal that deals with water quality, but then also dealing with in what communities is it that we need to look at water quality specifically or air quality, you know, before the proposals. And I think sort of in the 60s and 70s, HBCU faculty were very focused on the research and making sure they were accepted by the mainstream research community. But now I see faculty more going, you know, we can do research and we can do the other things at the same time supporting our communities, including issues of social justice and so forth. That's the big change I see. Do you think it's a we obviously understand higher education has tears of influence and not importance, but tears of focus, right? So you would look at a school like North Carolina A&T and they would do a research project that is very broad on air quality and how can we use technology to monitor and improve air quality? And then you would look at a school like Elizabeth City, which would do something just as important to that community, but not as broad. Do you think the Union or so many other small institutions and we neglect oftentimes that second tier, you know, we know what Howard does. We know what A&T does. We know what Hampton, FAMU. I don't want to leave anybody out, but there are about 10, 12 big institutions where it's clear, you know, excellent research is going on. But it's what's happening at the smaller institutions that actually do really well in graduating students instead. And those faculty do research as well, you know. And that we don't hear so much of. Is that on the school to do that? Because I know the challenge at a lot of the schools is to get your faculty who are so busy teaching, mentoring and researching. Sometimes they'll get these grants and have these projects and they don't, they forget to tell the public relations office or they'll forget to tell somebody or put it on Twitter. Neither they're not working, but they just that marketing and promotion is not top of mind. So is there a function that we could develop? Or is there a function that exists where we could bring that out of the faculty members to put that out there? Certainly. And, you know, we could do better. But oftentimes too. So say Virginia Union does put out a press release saying that they did receive two research awards recently at Virginia Union. You know, Morehouse College received three research awards recently. Put out, they put out a press release. What you see from Morehouse may get a little bit more, you know, recognition from the public. But what you get from Virginia Union, people just sort of gloss over it. So even if it's out there, it's not already received the way it should be either. So yes, we need to work on both ends. We need to work on getting the word out better. And that's that's proud of why, you know, I'm active in social media, but you only reach your followers. That's right. Now, that might be the question. How do we get more people to follow? Follow, right? Well, let me ask you this. Well, what are what are some of the grants? The more recent ones that you've announced, the more recent ones that you've helped to direct in application and funding, which projects are you most excited about or have piqued your interest the most recently? And why? Let me give you. Let me give you a couple of them. And the first one is the one I'm most excited about because I have to fight so hard within my agency to even be allowed to fund that. So I have this new track that where we give $9 million to a consortium of HBCUs to do education research on a topic of their choice to talk about HBCU issues and to study and research them. And that was a little bit of a fight because people thought that's way too much money to give to HBCUs. So the first such center was funded as a collaboration between University of Virgin Islands with the AAP and then they have partners with Fielding University and the Association of American Universities and Colleges or American Colleges and Universities, sorry. And they're studying leadership at HBCUs and how HBCU leadership impact student success and faculty success. So I'm really excited about that. I also funded a seed center. So not a full center yet, but a seed center at Morehouse College. They collaborate with about 40 other HBCUs on student success and student identity. So that I'm really, really excited about. But then I'm also excited about funding young faculty, young and upcoming faculty because it's very hard for HBCUs to attract young faculty and pay them enough and keep them. So if they get some research funding, it might be a little incentive for them to stay. And I'm particularly concerned with making sure that we have black faculty in engineering and science at HBCUs because a lot of the faculty makeup is not the same as our student body makeup anymore. So, you know, I can't discriminate and only fund black faculty, but I make sure that they are in the mix. Equitably represented. Yes. Do you do you think that the challenge for the HBCU research function is one where faculty of any nationality or any race have to have to commit to say, you know what, I want to work it in HBCU and then work and grind hard enough that they start to get the sponsored support. Or is it that the support needs to come to the institution and then the faculty will follow? Which is it a chicken and egg proposition of sorts? And which is the chicken and egg proposition? Yeah, yeah, it's both. You know, it's like this sort of vicious cycle. But then I see there are clear HBCUs, you know, from our background, our nationalities and our backgrounds who get it, who come there and who know what the mission is and they work hard and they get funding. And then when they get funding, that in terms strengthens the research enterprise at the institution, right? It strengthens the sponsored research office and makes the administrators aware that they need to do more to sponsor their faculty. And then, you know, there's sort of been this upswing. Now, typically, in my experience, it's like the faculty, you know, starts first and then the other thing follows. It's very rare that an HBCU sets up like a research enterprise without any research, funded research, to help their faculty because it's expensive, you know, and money, as we all know, you know, money is tight. So, you know, I have a, my program, I have $50 million an invalid support HBCU faculty. And that sounds like a whole lot, but you break it down. Not a hundred schools, right. It's per school, 500,000 per year, and we cannot expect miraculous things to happen. Yeah. With that kind of money. But, so, yeah, getting back to what I'm excited about, you know, I'm excited when I get proposals from young faculty that just propose research and involve their students. So, I, like I said, we funded three more house faculty just recently, faculty at Virginia Union, Delaware State, obviously also at the larger, you know, HBCUs, but I'm excited when we get to fund somebody at Lincoln University or, you know, a smaller institution. I'm also excited, like one project that I recently funded actually got the most hits on, on Twitter, and it was a young faculty at Howard, and she is studying and developing culturally responsive curricula for math teachers. She's drawing on the scientific knowledge of the Gullah people in South Carolina. So, you know, something like that. You talk so innovative. You talked earlier about how tough it can be. Is a project like that, is that the one you have to fight for? Because some of the funding committees like, what in the world is this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I have to.