 Well, good morning everybody. Thank you all so much for joining us. I could not be more excited to welcome you to this workshop hosted by the Chemical Sciences Roundtable on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. My name is Jeremy Mathis and I'm the Director of the Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology here at the Academy and this two-day workshop will be the first of many activities over the next few years led by the Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Chemical Sciences. Specifically, this event will aim to increase awareness of potential barriers to DEI and help participants gain the information needed to create more diverse, equitable and inclusive environments in their workplaces. The workshop is divided into three sessions. The first will focus on establishing programs that aim to build a climate conducive to DEI or enhance DEI in the talent pool. The second session will take place over Slack and will consist of productive conversations among all of the participants. And finally, the third session will focus on emerging programs that aim to increase DEI in the Chemical Sciences. Please feel free to engage in productive conversations on Slack during sessions one and three and there are dedicated Slack channels for those conversations. To submit questions throughout the workshop, please use the Q&A feature on Zoom. If you are tuning in via the live stream, you can submit questions to the speakers by emailing Ben Ulrich at the address that you see there and please note that this event is being broadcast and recorded and that by participating, you agree to have your questions and thoughts relayed into perpetuity. Additionally, there will be a proceedings in brief published later this year that summarizes the events of the workshop. And therefore, by submitting questions and engaging in the conversations on Zoom and Slack, you agree to have those conversations published. There are several resources on our website for your reference and use throughout the workshop, including the agenda, the speakers and the planning committee bios and a Slack guidance document. And if you're a Slack novice like me, please make sure you check that document out early and often because we do want everybody to be able to participate in the breakout discussions. Please take a moment to read through before participating in the Slack channel to make sure that you understand how to use all the functions. If you have any questions or experiencing technical issues, please refer to that Slack guidance document first and then feel free to reach out to one of our support staff like Ben Ulrich. I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to our planning committee members, Carlos Gonzalez, Ian Henry, Rigoberto Hernandez, Malika Jeffries-El, Mary Kerchoff, Cheryl Legan and Layta Winfield. They took a very simple idea that we came up with a few months ago and have turned it into this tremendous event that you're going to see over the next two days. I also want to thank our sponsors, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. We could not do any of this without their commitment and their support that they have so steadfastly worked over the past few years. And finally, I definitely want to thank our National Academy staff and the team that has put this together, led by Jessica Wolfman. They have done a fantastic job of bringing together the sessions in this workshop and really turning this idea into something that I think is going to be very special as we look at launching our big DEI initiative that we'll have with the Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology and the Chemical Sciences Roundtable over the next few years. And now I have the great pleasure to introduce our first speaker. Dr. Freeman Provowski is the President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research and publications focus on science and mathematics education with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. Previously, he chaired a National Academies Committee that produced the 2011 report, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation, America's Science and Technology Talent at Crossroad. Moderating the discussion following his talk will be Rigoberto Hernandez, who is the Gaump family professor in the Department of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University and the director of the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity, Equity, or Oxide. So with that, I'll turn it over to Freeman to get us started. And I want to thank you all again for joining us for this event today. Great, Jeremy. Thank you very much. I plan to talk in a conversational manner for about 20 minutes and then to open it up for questions and Rigoberto will be asking me questions based on what you say. And I begin with the report that Jeremy just mentioned at the Crossroad report because it turns out that report was written 10 years ago. I chaired that committee. My colleague Peter Henderson was the head of the study itself. And we had a number of recommendations that I think are as important today as they were 10 years ago. We talked about this pipeline, the continuum from K through 12 or pre-K through 12 through undergrad education, graduate education, PhD programs, postdocs, and then careers in the professoriate and then other research careers. And what is significant is that we found surprisingly that there were so many students who were interested in science and engineering. And the report by the way focuses heavily on the natural sciences and engineering. Certainly there are concerns about the social sciences, but we specifically focused on the areas where we have had the least amount of progress and that is in the natural sciences and engineering. And in those areas, what we found was a great interest on the part of many people in students and getting into those areas and yet the majority of students who go into those areas, majoring in those areas in the undergraduate experience end up not succeeding. Now, why is that important? Well, it didn't surprise us that only about 20 percent of underrepresented groups, particularly African Americans, Latinx, Hispanics, Native Americans, that in those populations only 20 percent were graduating. This is what we hear all the time. We were surprised to find that only about 32 percent of whites and about 41 percent of Asian Americans were succeeding, defining success simply as completing a bachelor's degree in those areas. And so what we can say and it is still the case that two thirds of Americans across the racial groups who begin in science and engineering don't succeed. Now, the first response by many people is it's a K through 12 problem. And as I often say, we in colleges blame high schools who blame the elementary schools who will then blame the family somehow. And the husband says it's the vice problem. And so I'm always suggesting that we spend a lot of time finger pointing on one other group or some group below us. But what was interesting is that once we looked at the data, what we saw was that large numbers of students who were well prepared by all the definitions, AP courses in high school, high SAT scores, that even those students tended not to stay in science, that often the more prestigious the university, academically prestigious, socially prestigious, the greater the likelihood that student that student will leave science. And at first people were suggesting it was because, well, they can go and make more money. Well, when we looked at it, no, often those students who were a students from high schools ended up getting seized and deciding to go into another area. And so what was clear was that it was the case and it still is the case that we tend to think of that first year or two in science and engineering as weed out courses. And so our major recommendation was that we strengthen the undergraduate experience. And while there have been some experiments in places, the challenge is that we're still not seeing larger numbers of people of color, as well as others who are succeeding there. In fact, my colleague Peter Henderson and I are writing another piece right now, based on from the 2011 to now, using the research that we've done that's been published in the issues of science and technology, two articles that you will see there. And a piece that we wrote for the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the last year, based on the conference celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Bush report. And what we are seeing is that we are, we've collected the new data from the National Science Foundation. And when looking at blacks, for example, we've gone from 2.2% of African Americans who were earning PhDs among all the PhDs awarded in the country in a given year for American institutions to now from 2.2% to today 2.3%. And so my talk today is really on moving the needle, but there's one caveat. It's important to recognize any progress that's being made. And there is progress being made, even though we know we need much more, but it's the progress that can give us hope. And so from our own campus, you will see this, that we've become the number one producer of African Americans are going to complete not only MD PhDs, but now also PhDs in natural sciences and engineering. And as great as that might sound, what that means is we're producing about 15 a year who've actually gone on bachelor's recipients who've gone on and complete PhD per year. And when you look at the top 10, we've just gotten this new data for blacks, and then I'm going to say something about the land next to Hispanic population. The fact is that, and this will be in the new article that will come out in issues in science and technology later this year, that many of them are the HBCUs. We are not an HBCU. We have students from 100 countries. We talk about international and domestic diversity, and we have perhaps about 19% African American, about eight or nine percent Hispanic. And the largest minority group for us would be Asian, about 25%. But the fact is that that list looks like this, UMBC, North Carolina A&T has become number two in the country. Howard is number three, then Florida A&M and Spelman are tied for number four, Xavier, and then the University of Maryland College Park, University of Florida, Morgan and Jackson State, Morehouse and Hampton, that gets you through the top 12 or so. Now, to be in that top 12, for example, we're talking about producing between seven bachelors who complete PhDs and 15. The numbers are very small for all of us. For the Latino population, the numbers are on a different scale, but the two University of Puerto Rico campuses are especially significant. Between those two, Myra Guez and Piedras, we're talking about almost 900 over a 10-year period. So you're talking about about 90 per year from those two. If you look at the next campuses, you're talking about University of Texas, El Paso is first, and then University of Florida, and then several other University of California campuses. But if you take the next three campuses, beyond the Puerto Rican campuses and add those numbers together, they still wouldn't be as many as the 90 per year Puerto Ricans that those two Puerto Ricans universities are creating. And that's a challenge given the financial challenges in that country right now, something that needs a lot of attention. But here's my point that the question is, how are those institutions doing it? What are they doing? And what did we say in our report 10 years ago? It is that we need to think about ways of replicating those initiatives. Many of you've heard me talk before and others talk about the Myra program and there and my TED talk which focuses on that and the four college pillars of success. And what I would suggest is what we talk about in science in general would be what we'd be talking about in chemistry and chemical engineering also because you're talking about the preparation of students, their performance, the idea that they have such a good experience that they want to do research that you want to get into the field, whether they're going on to do research or not. Why don't we focus on the PhDs? We need more people in the professorate. We know that in most universities, there are very few people of color, one of two blacks, one of two Hispanics, if that in many there are none. And students of color need to see them, but students in general need to see people of all types able to do this work and succeeding in this work. The other part though is that those four pillars of college success for my TED talk, it's the expectations, it is the idea of building community among the students and the faculty. It is the important notion that it takes researchers to produce researchers just as artists pull other artists into the work. It takes researchers to produce researchers and then we have to go turn to more rigorous evaluation of the work that we're doing. The newest book that my colleagues and I have written is entitled The Empowered University. And the notion is empowered, universities must be empowered to look in the mirror itself and to be honest about what is working and what is not working. And I would say that about the scientific community, I would say that about us people in chemistry, chemical engineering in other areas, my background is mathematics and certainly it's true in my discipline. Now, what am I saying? I'm saying high expectations, but not just high expectations about students. Of course, we know that. But the question is about high expectations of our colleagues and of ourselves. Are we doing all that we need to do? If you get a chance, look at our chemistry discovery center, the chair of chemistry at the time, Bill of course, who's now dean of science, worked with faculty to create a program that would involve much more collaboration, much more use of technology, real time responses to people, much more group work. And the results were phenomenal. We increased substantially the number of students of all types including students of color who were able to go on and to complete degrees. In fact, some years ago, the statistic that was most stunning in the country at about 2000 after we've been working on my hall and we've begun to do things with this chemistry discovery center a few years after that. What we saw was that there had been 66 blacks in the country who had completed bachelors in biochemistry. 22 came from my campus, one third. And we've never had that better number again since then. But people didn't begin to look at what we were doing. And the key had to do with looking at the backgrounds of students, figuring out what's the minimum level of skill students would need to have a reasonable chance in four or five years of completing a degree and doing well with at least these and getting into the research of getting faculty much more involved in the work. And that's one of the questions in the appellate university. To what extent are senior faculty involved in the work? Who are the champions? The champion for us has for years been Mike Summers, member of the national academies of Howard Hughes investigator. And he has shown others what that means so much so that he leads our replication effort right now. And that goes to one of the recommendations in our report from 11 years ago. Find the best programs and replicate them. It's not just about replicating practices. That is important. But finding a program that really works. And we go to the mile hub. So at this point Howard Hughes has funded replication efforts at both Penn State and Chapel Hill. And we've published the results in science and the results are remarkable. Those campuses are doing better and better in those areas. We are now replicating the mile hub program out at Chen with funding from Chen Zuckerberg at both Berkeley and San Diego. And the key in every case is that's most critical collaboration among faculty members on different campuses about the best approach to developing the program and to looking at what works. Understanding there's always some adaptation given the culture of an institution. And so whether we're talking about the programs from that NIH has funded or the programs that NSF has funded from the includes program to the most recent, the build program at NIH, what we need to be doing is looking at the evaluation to determine the extent to which is working. We have used the URISE program from from the NIH in working with our mile hubs and others to increase those numbers. And we can do the same thing with these other programs, but the most important recommendation we made at the federal level is that that needs to be much more coordinated work done among the national agencies. Right now we have different grants going out to different campuses. There is no true coordination of that work so that we understand who's making the difference. And there would be several things I would say. Number one, we need to think about identifying those best programs and those campuses. Those Puerto Rican campuses are doing an amazing job. The University of Texas El Paso for Hispanic students doing a fine job. And there are some others who have made a lot of progress. Our University of Florida is impressive for both Blacks and Hispanics, which is very unusual. And so the idea that we have one kind of institution that can do it all cannot work. We must look at minority serving institutions. We are one of those. We must look at the HBCUs. We look at, of course, Hispanic serving institutions and in research universities. And challenge institutions from the president, provost, dean, senior faculty in any area to talk about what would it take to even get on the list of institutions producing the top 30. In fact, one of the recent articles we wrote in issues in science and technology said that if we could double the number of students in the top 30 bachelor's or producing institutions for Blacks and similarly for Hispanics, that if we could double that number. For Blacks, we would increase the number by something like 40% and for Hispanics about 25% in the country. In other words, just doing that, just focusing the laser focus on the most successful institutions they have been producing many more can make a big difference. And similarly to invite other institutions into that work. I'm very pleased with the work of Hopkins and the fact that you've got a large grant there at this point at the graduate level for the Vivian Thomas program. Very proud of that. Very proud to be one of the campuses who will be working with you along with Howard and Morehouse and Spelman and several others. And the key to Morgan and I believe A&T, the key here is that we need more public private partnerships that can focus on private funds to help and public funds. And I'm very proud of Hopkins and the Vivian Thomas program that they're developing, but we need money at that level for the undergrad also because we need to build those numbers. And then finally, and before I get into questions, if you think about replicating, if you think about doubling the numbers, if you think about honest, difficult conversations on campuses, I have no doubt we can increase those numbers. And even though it sounds so discouraging to hear from 2% to 2.3%, but we have been producing more PhDs and I had several examples of what one person can do. So the first black woman to become a full professor in chemical engineering in Michigan is one of our graduates and she is amazing. Lola is now associate dean, but she's pulling in more students. And similarly at Duke, another chemical engineer and graduate from UMBC who went on to Duke, did an MD PhD, first black to get a PhD from there in neurobiology has become as of 2019, the Young Investigator, got the Young Investigator Award for the Neuroscience Society. First time a black has ever done that as an example. And then young woman getting a PhD in biochemistry from Harvard and going on to do a postdoc and now in the faculty at Columbia in School of Public Health. And so when you get that first, all of a sudden, and it's sad that we're still talking about first, but people begin to say it can be done. And they begin to bring in other people. We've got to get to the first and second and third and others. And I can name you dozens and dozens. My office now has hundreds, almost 400 who completed PhDs and others who are in the process or MD PhDs. The key though is that other campuses can do this. Finally, people often make the comment, well, it's because you've got a black president. No, think about Penn State and Chapel Hill. No, presidents are not a color. It takes commitment from people to make a difference. And before I get into questions, last point is this, we must find inspiration in many places. And so the inspiration for today in addition to the people I've already mentioned would be Dr. Kismika Corbett. Some of you know that name. We're so proud of her. She's a model scholar with UMBC and then to Chapel Hill in our home state of North Carolina came back to NIH postdoc. And she was the co-leader of the team at NIH to produce that Moderna vaccine and their technologies and some of the other vaccines. She along with Bunny Graham. And so she becomes the first black woman in the world to create a vaccine. Most of us have never even thought about has there been one before, you know? And so that's the point about opening our minds and thinking about dreaming about the possibilities. She goes on the faculty at Harvard in the fall. We need many more of these Kismika Corbett's or Coffrey's Arasa at Duke who's doing that. I mean, and we can do that if we become laser focused and if we're willing to look in the mirror and be honest about the challenges. Thank you very much. Ready for questions. Thank you so very much, Freeman. I wish that you could hear the applause, but I will give some applause myself because I'm very much appreciate your remarks. And the audience that is here has been very attentive. I want to remind everyone in the audience that you should type questions into the Q&A box. I will be reading some of those questions as we go along. And I'm going to take, of course, the prerogative of being chaired to ask the first question, which is maybe I shouldn't, but after you've talked so much about moving the needle and how very important it is to move the needle. And I'm asking myself as an audience member, how can I move the needle? And so I have a series of questions and I interject them as I go along, but I'll start with me as the I, and I'm a professor. What can I do to move the needle? There's several things, Rick Berger, and I know you are doing some great things at Hopkins right now. I've been reading about your work. Let me start by saying getting to know the issues, to understand the challenges that students of color face. And that means finding people who can come into your lab. I mean, I'm always interested in students getting into labs and having experiences, substantive experiences in research, number one. Number two, having conversations with your colleagues about the issues. One of our strategies in the empowered university book is the use of analytics. Understand the data in your university, but particularly in your department. In other words, who are the people who are succeeding? Who've been the blacks? Who've been the Hispanics? Who've been the whites and who've been the Asians? What have been their backgrounds? So using the technology to understand trends and patterns, number one, so that quantitative side, then the qualitative side. And then focus groups with students in chemistry, for example, to listen to their experiences. Not just students of color, because what I can tell you is most departments have never looked to see what is the probability of a young white male, a young white female who starts in chemistry, graduating with a degree in chemistry, and then what's the probability that they're going to get the PhD? Do we understand those pathways? And do we understand how many people leave and why do they leave? And so I'm often saying if you show me a department or a university that deeply cares about students, then they're going to know those students and their circumstances. And if you show me one that cares about students, I'll show you one that also cares about students of color. So it shouldn't just be isolated, only students of color. We need to understand the larger numbers. I know that my grad alma mater, Illinois, has worked on that to some extent, and they're still working on it in terms of understanding the big picture of how students are doing it. Thank you. Cindy Rivera Jimenez asks, what programs would you recommend for retention of students that want to do graduate studies, but don't necessarily want to go to academia? Well, you know, I start just honestly starting with my off because it's now had 30 years of experience. And some of our students have gone on the on the faculties of fine institutions and different types of institutions, number one, but others have considered careers in science. I want to give credit to one of my graduates of PhD in computer science, Raph Simmel, who's over the applied physics lab at Hopkins. He has identified Mahos as they have been going to grad school around the country and has pulled in a number of them in chemistry and other areas to work there at APL. So that the notion of, I would say, in terms of programs, I would go to the most successful campuses. Those, I mean, Texas El Paso mainland, I would say it has obviously done a really good job. They have because they wouldn't have the money of the larger places. And yet they are the largest producer when you get past the couple of Puerto Rico campuses. But I do for Latinx, but there's something that's wonderful about those universal Puerto Rico campuses. When you hear me saying those two campuses together, 900 over 10 years, compared to the next four or five that don't get to 900, right? So looking at what they're doing just says, I'm very proud of what a place like Spelman has done for HBCUs, right? And very proud that University of Florida is one of those campuses predominantly white that is being able to produce more blacks and Latino. So looking at those universities with the best track record will tell you something about programs that should be considered. And we're certainly proud of what UMBC has done and want to replicate that. So the feeling is mutual. Wei asks, what can I contribute? So this is referring to Wei as a postdoc, presumably to move the needle. Yes. I think first of all, as a postdoc, the most important thing you can do is to research, research, research. You want to be the best scientist you can be. I know you're interested in helping and to the extent that you get the chance to work with a grad student or an undergrad of color and to get them to pull them into the research. One of our challenges for postdocs and young faculty of color is that sometimes they're pulled on to do so much in this area of diversity that their research slips. I am a strong believer we want scientists of color to be as powerful in the research first, as productive in that research. Because once you get tenure, then you can do more and more. And it doesn't mean you wait until then, but I am saying to make sure you're balancing things in a way that the research comes first. The research comes first because then whether you're going to a university or you're going to a lab somewhere and that's not a university. And there are some who will decide to do other things. We have a number of PhDs who decided after that that they didn't want to. I do want to say this, often for the MD PhDs what you see is that people pull them on both sides. And so the clinical people say if you want to be a really good doctor, you've got to focus your attention here. And the serious scientist is going to say no, you've got to focus on the science. And a young person who's not 30 years old sometimes is pulled. And invariably they get pulled into the clinical, rather than the research. It's rare that I really, Sandy Williams, Guamadine and Dukes Bechton now was wonderful in working with my program, our program and me and others. And they have four black males now on the faculty there, two already tenured, two on their ways, MD PhDs in three cases. And the key is that he helped those MD PhDs, Coffrey Zarrasa, to balance the two. And they need protection. And so one of the points I want to make is it's not only that we need mentors, we need champions, advocates and champions who will knock down doors and say, wait a minute, let's be very careful about this. So to the postdoc, keep doing that research, help a student when you can, and just keep understanding the issues, but have that vision of becoming that very high, highly productive researcher who can pull many more people into the work. And I would argue that all of these outcomes are successes, right? You have many pathways and we're not arguing that those are not successes. The problem perhaps is that we lose, that is research enterprise, those of us in the research enterprise lose if we don't have these great minds stay and expand what can be done in our profession, right? Yes, yes. And I would say we need people who are going to all types of institutions. We know we need more in the research one institutions. We know the numbers are so small, but we need them in comprehensives in two institutions and people will follow different paths, but we also need them in corporations. You know, we've got a hundred biotech and IT companies on our campus and we have to work really hard to identify Black and Latinx PhDs who can do that work, who can be involved in companies. If you look at the Baltimore Washington car and you go to most biotech companies, you see very few Blacks and very few people of color, Latinx people. Similarly, in the national agencies, when I chaired this commission for Mr. Obama on educational excellence for African Americans, we got all the data on the national agencies. Not one agency at that time could say we had even one percent of the scientists who were Black and it was very small percentages of Hispanics. Today, we are up to still not two percent. So in all the national infrastructure agencies, we still have very small percentages of Blacks and Latinx of Hispanic people who are scientists. Perhaps you can comment on the other factors that that kind of representation would have in our one institution. So as we have more diverse set of faculty and administrators and staff in our institutions, what will be the additional effects on our society? Great question. And I'm always saying this because right now, since George Floyd, who seems to be a symbol for the structural racism, is a symbol, not seems to be. But since that time, every institution, even companies, are doing more with DEI. But DEI is about much more than a title. It's fine to have, and we really are very proud of our equity and inclusion council, but to have faculty on that council can make a big difference. Number one, number two, we need, I mean, the strength of the academic program is going to be with the faculty. We need support from a president and dean, but it's really with the faculty. And what I'm saying is that we need to be supporting your chief diversity officers, but their role will not be important if you don't have people in real power in the professoria who are also working in that work. DEI people can be facilitators, and that's wonderful. But the work has to be done by professors. And when you, as soon as you get one or two, all of a sudden, you've got more people wanting to come to that work. People begin to believe it's possible. I'm telling you with, with Dr. Corbin now, with the publicity she's getting, all these little girls and all these young black women writing to her all the time, I want to do that. I want to be an immunology. I want to create a vaccine. You begin to believe it's possible. And even though, and I would also say in departments, when there's no one of color in the department, that perspective is not there. And so the same thing was true with women. One of our recommendations in the 2011 report was that we have an advanced type program for people of color. We're still waiting to see that kind of program. I was the PR on the advanced program at UMBC with a number of women co-eyes. And we know it made a difference in the number of women faculty in departments. When there are not women in the department, men have one perspective. And even when they are working to be as supportive of everyone, they don't really get it the way they can when women are there. The same thing is true when there are people of color. So when the people of color are in the room, the conversation changes. That's true in corporate America. It's true in the academy. It's true throughout our society. Thank you. Switching to one of the questions from the attendees, Regina easily asks, what factor does education affordability have in student recruitment and retention? PR is substantially more affordable than some of the HBCUs in the top 10 list. Right. The affordability is an important issue. And if the student does not have the funds to go, it's very difficult to get in. But even if the student gets enough and then starts working, the line I use is this. It's impossible to major in biochemistry and do well while working 25 hours on the outside. It's almost impossible. And one of our challenges at the national level is that people don't recognize we should be giving much more money for financial support for the students at the undergraduate level. Yes, we need it at the grad level. People get that. But somehow people think that undergrads will be okay. They are not okay. And I mean, for us with milehawk, yeah, we've gotten money from Mr. Milehawk. But the money we get from our endowment, and we are working to build endowment for institutional stability, but the money we get from the endowment gives us about 30% of what we need every year. And so every year, we're out begging for money constantly. And so the fact is that we need public and private resources leveraged to produce more people. The person, the questioner is absolutely right. Without resources, it's really hard to make a difference. Maybe this right to Ryan Dover's question, which is, what is the estimated cost for university to implement a program like UMBC, like the UMBC has? I know there are some grants that are now being made available by some national institutes, and UMBC has or had a grant from the milehawk family, which you just referred to, an article I've read stated around $8 million to start a program that UNC and Penn State. Secondly, what arguments would you take to an administration if we can't secure the funding from outside sources? Or we don't want to wait for that to happen? It's a great question. We started milehawk with a $500,000 grant 30 years ago with Mr. Milehawk. And we brought in at that time 19 students. And right now, we have to put it in perspective. Right now, the program costs us about $3 million per year. We have been able to build and to get commitment from the university that people gave money years ago from their budgets for this idea of diversity. The university has to put some skin into the game. And so we were able to get together almost a million dollars. So of the $3 million, a million is in the base from the university. Another almost a million will come from the endowment that we have. And then we have to raise over a million a year. And that's for 300 students. And that's not paying full rides. In the early years, we were giving them full rides. Now, a lot of kids want milehawk. We have thousands trying to get into milehawk. We only take about 60 to 70 per year. But large numbers who want to be in the program. And if we had more funding, we could double the numbers. This is what I keep saying to people. But the key is this, in the early years, you don't have to start off with a program with 300 students. You can start building community. You can start with 10 students, 10 per year, you see. And quite frankly, every institution gives out different kinds of scholarships and financial support. You can decide to focus some of the money you have on strength in chemistry or strength in science or majors in these disciplines. And what happens is you build a brand and it does make a difference. And then we've been able to get grant money from a number of places. Rod Pettigrew for years at NIVB was giving us quite a bit of money. We're still working to get some more from them. None of these left, for example, NIH. But also, Nori Volkow has been amazing in necessarily sort of drug addiction and has been giving us funds. And then, of course, we have the URISE program, which is one of those that gives us money. And we have a build program and that gives money. Now, but only a small portion of it can be used. Some portion can be used for scholarships, others for other kinds of things. So it's resources. But I would say this. This issue of representation should be a national priority in the same way that finding the vaccine for COVID was. I mean, we've got to get to that level. The question in moving the needle is how urgent is this matter? And for me, what we say in some of our articles is why is it that so many people don't believe in science or evidence? Well, they don't see people looking like themselves or people who are from their backgrounds, whether they're first generation college kids who, I mean, families, two thirds of America's families have never had anyone go to college. Just graduate from college. I mean, think about that. I mean, it's only about 20 some percent of African Americans, only 15 percent of Hispanics, but only about 38 percent of whites, you know, and maybe 50 percent of Asians. But you put it together, two thirds of Americans have never had anyone graduate from college. If you've never seen anyone in your family who is either a doctor or a scientist, why would you believe in science and medicine? So it is a matter of national public health and security that we have many more. So it's got to be that level of urgency. And I would say to campuses where we're working to get that national sense of urgency, I do think that their money, their funds on any campus being used right now to bring in students. The question is how important is success in science on your campus? There's the issue you have to face. And that's not to take away from the importance of our two managers in social sciences, but the place where we are the least successful in our country would be natural sciences and engineering. We need to do much more. We need many more. My campus, for example, has to do more to produce more blacks in the social sciences PhDs, because all my African Americans into social sciences go to law school right now. You know, and we're saying we want to direct some in the other direction. So every campus has these issues. But I'm suggesting in natural sciences and engineering, there has to be a priority for the campus to make it happen. Those law students are also success stories. But again, we also give you and I want to give you points for the shout outs to the various funders because it's a good reminder that this is about people and about how all of us have to be intentional to move the needle. And it's at every level, including foundation agencies. Jesse Robbins asked, and this is again, this is the last question about money, but I think it's an important one. Do you have any recommendations for small liberal arts colleges who do not have the funds to replicate these programs from research universities? You know, I would say if you talk with the staff members at a number of places, including NIH and NSF in their education divisions, there are programs that have been successful on liberal arts colleges. That can be helpful. Some of the HBCUs that I mentioned have had funding from those agencies, but other institutions have also. And there are campuses that are very successful liberal arts colleges, quite frankly, I would best type for producing scientists. I mean, people from Herobarmus to Tom Check are graduates of liberal arts colleges. And what I've said when I've worked with a number of liberal arts colleges is that the question is how to take some of the funding, broad funding that you're using for diversity, to produce more people of color in those areas? Because liberal arts colleges produce a number, disproportionately large numbers of PhDs in science, but they're simply not people of color. And while I agree that being a lawyer is successful, if the student has an interest, though, in science, I think it's so sad when the student doesn't get the support to continue in science. If the student comes to kind of say, I want to be an attorney, I want to be the Supreme Court Justice, then that's success. But I mean, clearly when the student has an interest in science, and on the liberal arts colleges we see, and I've been to a lot, you'll see numbers of students of all races who are not succeeding. And so it's about priority of the institution. But I do think talking to people in successful programs about places they get bigger and larger amounts of money can be helpful. The other aspect of this is pointed out by Marilyn Huff. She asks, she knows, at the HBCUs and PR universities, there's a critical mass of STEM students of color to support each other through the difficult times. And this, by the way, goes to this cohort building that you were mentioning that's a key to the Meyerhoff program. She says, universities with smaller POC communities tend to have support groups for POC across disciplines. Unfortunately, this can lead to POC students having stronger support networks outside the STEM fields that incite it. How can this be addressed? It's a great question. I've looked at the policy program for years, you know, the founder of the program. And I know there's at least one science program that's a part of policy. But what I would say is that it's really important to identify students early in the freshman year or some from high school who could be a part of a group. A group may be by students, and there may be a program across disciplines, but you can still bring together those students who have an interest in science. I've seen this done, and maybe from physics to chemistry to other areas, and to give them some special experiences together. And for smaller campuses, the idea of having five working together can make a big difference. You'd be surprised how three to five students who have a common mission, and whose mission, by the way, as the social scientists would say, would be strengths-based. In other words, too often we talk about people of color and their deficiencies, as opposed to talking about what strengths they bring to the table. And for our campus, there's a wide range in my house. They are those who have come from really first-rate science and tech schools in the richest counties in my state and all the way up to New York from Howard County, Montgomery County, and they're quite good. They're quite good. But this is the point we don't realize, even when students are quite good and have fours and fives and near perfect math SATs, most of them don't make it either. That's what we don't realize. I mean, because people say, oh, he gets good students. Yeah. But we've done studies to look at students who had very high test scores, who've gone to some of the best places and they leave science. At best, they may stay in medicine, not majoring in science, taking the science courses they need. And that's fine, too, because we need more doctors. But if they started off thinking about a research career, that's when I say we have a challenge. But I do think starting small and having conversations with three students even, and seeing how they're doing, and taking the time to look at the last 10 or 15 over years who have succeeded or not and talking to them can make a big difference. And then getting some faculty who are interested in these issues. But I would say to every campus, the question I would ask, for me, the ineluctible question, have you looked at the data, by race, by gender, by first-generation college or not, to determine the probability of a student graduating in chemistry who starts in chemistry? Even when the base is small, what can we find out? What can we learn? Get the data first, start there, and then listen to the voices of the people who tried it and left it. I'll give you just one out-of-the-box strategy we used in early years. When students earned C's in the first year, the first year we had only black males, by the way, which some people didn't like. Black women were very pleased we were trying to help black males because all we could hear about were prisons. We started that way because Mr. Mao, who's an engineer, said everything he saw in black males was negative. This was 30 years ago. And we started the first year with black males, second year we got some money from NASA who delighted to bring in black women. And then we moved on from there. And now, Mao, by the way, is maybe 70% of color, 30% of whites and Asians who are interested in the issue of underrepresentation. But in that first group, several of the students earned C's in chemistry, in the first chemistry. And they've been A students from their high schools, and we decided together that they would retake the course. There were a lot of tears, not a positive situation, but retaking the course made all the difference in the world. The question you have to ask, and we did the analytics later on, if a student earned C's in the first year of science, what's the probability that the student goes ahead and does even better the next year? It's rare. It's very rare. You don't get in math, in chemistry, in physics, if you don't, because everything is sequentially based. I'm studying French right now. You don't start from scratch and all of a sudden begin speaking fluently. You learn their basics there in conjugation and vocabulary, and you build. The same thing as you know is true in science. And so, I mean, I asked you to look at those students who earned C's, and whether they succeeded or not. Often they do not. Now, finally, the faculty at UMBC and the chair of the department of chemistry decided, that's when they decided to go to the Chemistry Discovery Center, to see how we could increase the number of people earning B's a better, because we realized that the greatest chance of success will be when students can get at least B's in courses and get involved in research. And that has made the difference. It's one strategy. I would argue that what you were doing was fixing the program, not fixing the students. You identified that those students were not learning the material in the way that you were exposing them to. And you had to change the program to be able to have them succeed. And then they did. Surprising. And one of the things we say in the book, because it's not all good. It's important in a book to tell the problems to, we were having incredible success. We brought in some new faculty who have been taught in the old way who to believe most people shouldn't get an A or B. And when we looked at the data, we started going back the other way. All for all students. We started having larger percentages. So we had to really rethink it and retalk. I mean, even though we talked about the success, because the mindset of so many is, well, you're not going to have so many people getting A's and B's. It's not about having a standard set by the American Chemical Society of a test that everybody would agree. Here are the concepts you must have mastered. But rather, we shouldn't have more than 30% of the students in the age of these, regardless of how good they are. So I'm saying even when you make such a big progress, if you don't keep watching it, it goes right back to the old way. That's right. So Edgar Ariaga asks, besides completion of degree rates, what else could programs use to assess how they are moving the needle? In particular, in the short term? Sure. I would say just starting with grades and attitudes of students and level of involvement in research, looking at the grades of the students. I mean, people sometimes don't use the rigor of analysis. They can say, here's a nice kid who keeps doing research. And that's great. But you think about it. You're going to need, I'm using that. I'm saying it kind of heart and nose, but you need about that B average. You really do. To make sure the students grasp the concepts necessary to go to the next level. But secondly, they need research experiences that will really increase the passion for the work. Because what you're going to be telling them is, this is going to take you anywhere from seven or eight years to nine or 10, depending on the situation, depending on the situation when you think about the PhD and postdoc. And so if you think about it, the only way people are going to do that is if they're really excited. And then the other part, of course, and I've been on the study groups looking at careers after the PhD, we know all the reasons that a student would decide not to do it and how long it is before they can get the first R one and all of that. So you got all that to counter. But I would say in those early years, it's having them feeling good about grasping the concepts and secondly, using what they've learned in research labs and learning the joy, the fascination of failing in a lab, quite frankly, because it's not always that you succeed. Sometimes you learn more when you fail, but you understand you get back up and you keep learning that the thing that Mike Sum has always said to me is Freeman, more than having a kid get an A, I want her to be intellectually curious, constantly asking questions. And it's developing that muscle of asking the questions and getting back up when you don't do well. It's all of that mindset that goes into researchers producing researchers. Those would be the things. And so looking at their performance, are they publishing papers? The sweet spot of UMBC is the large numbers of our students publishing referee journals as undergraduates, in some cases as first authors. And so we really are immersed in that. And then we have others who work at the Maryland Medical School, some who work over at Hopkins, and then many who work in the national agencies. And it makes, and then they go away in the summers. But we always talk about sustained research experiences first over a couple of years in the same lab just to get that experience. So it's all those kinds of things. The quality of the research experiences, quality of the attitudes and listening to them. Are they really feeling that they are welcomed in the program? Just one example, there was an honors organic chemistry class and the professor came in, he looked at the class and he said, and it turned out the class of the first time had at least half students of color. And the first thing he said was, this doesn't look like an organic chemistry honors class. And so several of the students of color came to me very upset and said a couple of the women, they said, you know, he's not used to seeing us in the class and he's already made certain assumptions. And I said, no, go back to him and ask him, you're a scientist. Don't draw conclusions from your anecdotal impression. Go back and ask him what he meant. Just ask, I said, don't be angry, you know, but take your time, breathe deeply, don't all of you go together, just a couple and just say, what, you know, what does it mean? And innocently he said, I've never had, I've never had an honors organic chemistry class this large. This is more people that I've ever seen in the organic chemistry class, right? It was a wonderful story. But if he had not, if we, if I hadn't told him to go and asked, they would have assumed it was racism or sexism, you see. And what I'm saying is often they have misinterpretations, misunderstandings. In other cases, it could be the student, the person says something that can be a little insulting. But having those robust conversations to make sure students of color aren't feeling people are against them somehow can make a big difference, big difference. We need trust. We need trust to allow ourselves to benefit from our differences. Yes. And that's exactly what that story points out. So I thank you for sharing. Yes. To speaking of differences, the diversity, Satma Sarupriya asks, can you please define who do you mean when you speak of scientists of color? Are these limited to Hispanic and black scientists? No, no, no, many of my, and we have different definitions. We have, first of all, we have very few scientists of color at UMBC. Let me start there. Even when we've had, let me just put it out there, even when we've been able to attract, for example, we have a couple of Latinx faculty in biology and chemistry. But when we've attracted blacks in chemistry, unfortunately, did not work out, did not work out in terms of the research. All right. We have, we do not have any blacks in chemical engineering. And so we, so the scientists and the engineers who are helping in many cases are whites, quite frankly. And that's why the MAHO program also has whites in it and Asians in it, because we need people of all races who are interested in these areas. The scientific infrastructure is heavily white and then some Asians with a few blacks and Latinx, we cannot do it alone. It needs all types of people to be able to do it for sure. In this context, and I think we recognize that we're celebrating API month, Linda Non asks, what actions are higher education programs taking to address the model minority effects, such as a stereotype that is detrimental to the advancement of, which is a stereotype that is detrimental to the advancement of Southeast Asian Americans and STEM. We have to talk about the issues. We have had wonderful students who are Pacific Islanders, and we bring it in the mild program in general, and we bring them into the conversation to understand that it's, first of all, when thinking broadly, beyond science, when thinking about diversity, it's very important to bring specificity to the area. The report that we did talked some about Native Americans and Asians, but it was heavily blacks and Latinos because those are the biggest groups of underrepresented groups. But we still need to talk about Pacific Islanders, for example. We also need to talk about those Native Americans. I'll never forget Carlos Gutierrez at NIH and his bringing that to everybody's attention, for example, but I would also say the notion of specificity and understanding what those groups are experiencing on the campus, very important. So one of the things, just in terms of the culture of the university, we do have a range of diversity groups and different groups within the Asian population or Asian American population. So a wonderful group of Filipino kids, and then others who are focused on the Pacific Islands specifically, and most important, to talk about what challenges they face each group. One of the points that I've heard from students often is, don't just assume that all Asian people are well educated. Yeah, it's true that 55% of Americans who are from Asian backgrounds have a bachelor's degree, but there are some populations, Pacific Islanders, where those numbers are as low as they are for Blacks and Hispanics. And so that idea of Pacific Islanders, the idea of specificity is very important. Thank you. JJ Fuentes-Rivera asks, as you said earlier, it takes researchers to produce researchers. It is often an uphill battle to balance and manage the very busy research academic calendar of tenure track position, especially if you are from an underrepresented background. His question is, or their question, forgive me, their question is, what can departments do, or what are they currently doing with pre-tenure underrepresented professors to foster recruitment and retention initiatives of URM graduate students? There are two things I would say. Number one, you heard me mention the NSF program. The NSF Advanced Program for Women has been quite successful on my campus and on many campuses right now. And that program provides a lot of money to build infrastructure in order to support women as we should be because we still have major shortages in a number of the departments. And that's why specificity, even within natural sciences and engineering, will be important because some areas are doing better than others. But it seems to me part of startup packages for our underrepresented groups will involve opportunities to support them in bringing in students who can be successful. And I would say two things to an underrepresented person who is working towards tenure. You certainly want to attract people of color when you can find them at the level that you can really work with them and they can help you out and you can help them out. That will be some cases where it may not be possible at first because a part of the problem is what's the reputation of the department right now in succeeding in science? I mean, it's taken us a long time to even out to having great success at the undergraduate level to begin to have some success with our PhD programs in seeing how students could succeed, whether in computer science or in chemistry or what other areas, and then where they go when they do succeed. I mean, Mike Summers can now show you Black and Latinx students and students of color who've gone on faculties of many of the R01 campuses and some other faculty too. So when we talk about recruiting, you said, look at these students. They've completed their PhDs from us, postdocs here, and this is where they are now. That makes all, so you've got to feel that reputation. The question is, is there enough of a reputation that it's possible to do it or is it going to be an uphill battle? Let me just be honest with you. If it's going to be such an uphill battle, you're not getting people of the level you need. Your number one priority as a young faculty member is to get somebody who can be really good in your lab, really good in your lab. You will have time to bring in more underrepresented groups. So, Freeman, we're entering the lightning round. I'm going to ask you a quick question or two and you're going to have one sentence. Mentoring works. Mentoring is one-on-one. How do we do it at scale? We need to do what we did with the NSF Advanced Program. That is training sessions on mentoring for a lot of people and looking at the return on investment. There's one thing that everybody that's listening in the audience should do. What should they do to move the needle? One sentence. Every person should look in the mirror and say, what am I doing right now and what can I ask my university to do to make a difference? Take responsibility. Not to expect the president to do it all for you, right? That's right. That's right. That's right. Well, thank you, President for these wonderful remarks. This has been a great conversation. I was only able to do it because I was armed with all these wonderful questions from the participants and I'm looking forward to seeing them engaging with these questions through the Slack channel. There's some questions that are still open. I'm not sure how we'll be able to answer those, but we'll shift them over to the Slack channel. Some of us, maybe Professor President Herbowski will answer them as well. We're now going to take a 20-minute break and we'll ask you to return everyone to return at 12.20 and we'll start with the next session. Thank you again, President Herbowski. Big clap. Thank you very much.