Creating An Industrial Work Group Atmosphere In Technology Graduate Programs: An Unexpected Impact On Minority Success In Graduate School

The interdisciplinary graduate program in Microelectronics-Photonics (microEP) was created at the University of Arkansas in the fall of 1998 to merge traditional graduate research and educational excellence with specific training in operational effectiveness methods, intra and entrepreneurial skills, and teaming and group dynamics practice. The stated goal of this approach was to create a graduate program that emulates the industrial work group environment, with the group objective being that every graduate student achieves the highest academic training of which he or she is capable. In the seven years since the microEP grad program was started, this educational experiment in creating a graduate program centered in a natural work group culture has proven beneficial to its students – and has even been largely adopted by the UA Physics graduate program 1 . What was not expected is that this natural work group approach also created a graduate community that has acted to bridge minority students from the heavily supportive MSI atmosphere to the generally impersonal atmosphere found in white majority research intensive grad programs. Including the fall 2005 entering microEP Cohort 8 students, one hundred and three students are currently enrolled or graduated. This includes seventeen minority students, a percentage half again as high as the national average of graduating minority PhD students 2 and much higher than the current enrollment in the traditional UA science and engineering graduate programs. Two African-American men have completed their PhD microEP degrees, with one joining Virginia Commonwealth University as a tenure track faculty member, and the second currently enrolled in the University of Alabama Birmingham Medical School. In this paper the authors will first discuss methods that have been used to locate students in communities underrepresented in science and engineering that would be well served by the microEP research and educational training. The authors will then discuss their observations on how the natural work group approach to graduate education has unintentionally addressed some of the factors affecting minority student retention 3 . Philosophy of microEP Graduate Program The microEP graduate program at the University of Arkansas was started in 1998 with the intent of creating an educational environment for its students that was as much like an industrial professional technologist work group as possible. The technical focus of this work group would be in the areas of advanced micro/nanoscale materials and devices in the broad area of electronics and photonics. The method was to be the agency that would allow merging of already existing academic efforts in this field with operational methods and training in common usage in industry. P ge 11367.2 The summation of this approach is called the Cohort Method, with every student entering the program in a given academic year (Summer, Fall, Spring cycle) becoming part of that year’s Cohort. The number of entering students in these Cohorts has grown from eleven in Cohort 1 to an average of eighteen students over the last three Cohorts. In general, about two-thirds of the students in each Cohort enter in the fall semester. There is no negative curriculum impact to the students entering in January, so our history has been that about one third of the microEP students enter in the spring semester. This educational experiment was supported initially by a NSF small group research grant, followed by a 1999 NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) grant and a 2000 Department of Education Fund for Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) grant. The microEP program has since won a three year NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) site and then five year extension, a five year NSF Graduate Student in K12 Education (GK-12) grant and then five year extension, a NSF Partnership for Innovation (PFI) grant and then follow up PFI grant, and a five year NSF Material Research Center for Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) grant with a just awarded second five year continuation. The microEP program has also met some success in implementing an industrial management approach into the academic environment. While the student activities in management training and practice are described in another paper submitted to the Engineering Management Division at the 2006 ASEE Annual Conference 4 , highpoints of both student management training and industrial management techniques used by the microEP program include: • Matrix management of student curricula by major professor and cohort group manager • Formal planning of research with Microsoft Project, including monthly reporting • Peer mentoring on research planning in student-led weekly group meetings • Research progress summary reports by semester • Resume and curriculum plan updates by semester • Summer short courses on narrow topics using industrial style scheduling • Research presentations on current hot issues using industrial format reporting • Solicitation-style candidacy exam process, with open written source access • Creativity and team building through industrial-style one to two day seminars • Formal summer classes in Ethics, and Proposal Writing and Management • Formal fall/spring classes in Operations Management • Formal class in Research Commercialization (intra/entrepreneurship of technology) • MicroEP Program management through Administrator/Board type structure • Recognition of microEP graduates shared between program and professor’s department • Active program management of research professor matching to students These management techniques were designed to make the microEP program a partner in the success of our traditional departmental grad programs, not a competitor to the departments for resources. The intent was to create a new educational path that would attract additional students to the University of Arkansas rather than to redistribute the students already enrolled in our traditional departmental graduate programs. P ge 11367.3 Impact of the Cohort Methodology on program culture As the microEP program was being defined in early 1998, it was recognized that the only way in which the student goal that every student achieve his/her full academic potential is if it was adopted as a work group goal. That is, the microEP program requires that its students consider themselves successful only if everyone in their cohort, and for that matter all cohorts, performs at their maximum level of which they are capable. This program-required engagement with their professional graduate student colleagues drove many of the other program attributes, as it required extraordinary efforts to create the opportunities for students to know each other beyond the classroom environment. Without this level of knowledge of each other beyond the confines of the classroom, everyone stays a name without a face rather than a person with both needs and strengths. It was anticipated that the barriers to microEP students actively and routinely helping each other would not be based in the willingness of students to help those in need. Instead, the barriers would be erected by the student needing help worrying that their professional stature would be diminished by admitting that they were having difficulties mastering class material or research skills. By putting program activities in place such that the students know each other as people, and by microEP management active promotion of the concept of those in need of help today will be the expert in another subject tomorrow, the microEP program culture has grown into a true work group mentality with this common goal of total academic success. This in turn has been reflected in student interactions in multiple areas, as their focus has been redirected outward toward balancing organizational optimization with the optimization of their own local experience. This simple change in organizational philosophy has resulted in changes in personal behaviors at both the personal interaction level and in interactions between research groups. A final aspect of the Cohort Methodology is in the admission of students to the microEP program. It was decided early in the program that students would be admitted to the program would be admitted to the graduate program, even with weak undergraduate academic records, if it was determined through personal interviews and recommendations that the student had identified and corrected the cause of their prior weak performance. The attribute of admission policy that was inviolate was the absolute requirement that the research and educational strengths of the microEP program were well-matched to the career preparation needs of the student applicant. In other words, the program would only accept students who had a clear idea of their professional and personal goals – and how the microEP strengths would well-prepare them to meet their goals. The metrics of success of the microEP program would include traditional academic measures such as graduation rate and time to degree, but only in the sense of that being an in-line process control for an academic program. The true metric of success would be the success of the students in finding positions in career fields of their choice after graduation, and in their early career professional and personal rate of growth and achievement. P ge 11367.4 Impact of Cohort Methodology on incoming students: Students entering graduate school directly after their bachelors degree are faced with several transition areas that they must successfully navigate as they start their graduate degrees. These include: • Increased coursework expectations • Decreased accessibility to faculty at research institutions • Differences in community cultures and activities • Increased expectations of independent development of tasks • Loss of support networks (academic and community) These issues affect all incoming graduate st