Grooming for grad school

By Letisia Marquez

Rafeek Mohamed, a senior at Hobart and Williams Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., had not given much thought to attending graduate school until he landed at UCLA a few weeks ago.

Mohamed and nine other students are participating in this year's Summer Humanities Institute, an eight-week program aimed at preparing African Americans and other traditionally underrepresented students for graduate school in the humanities or humanistic social sciences. The institute, which ends Aug. 18, is organized by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Mohamed, a first-generation college student, said he was content with earning an undergraduate degree until he delved into a research project that scrutinizes past studies on African Americans and immigration.

"I've enjoyed it so much that I'm considering some sort of graduate degree combining economics and African-American studies," Mohamed said. "The institute has taught me to broaden my horizons and study different ethnic groups."

By cultivating future graduate students, institute leaders hope to raise the number of African Americans and other traditionally underrepresented students in graduate programs in the humanities and in the professoriate. Nationwide, African Americans make up only 4% of those enrolled in graduate programs in the humanities, according to the Council of Graduate Schools. And black professors make up 5.3% of fulltime faculty in higher education across the country, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

After participating in the institute, many students have pursued graduate education at universities such as UCLA, UC Berkeley, Columbia University and the University of Michigan.

Guerschmide Saint-Ange, an alumna of Hampton University, a historically black university in Virginia, said that her experience at the institute showed her that she's well prepared to excel in a graduate program at a major research university.

"Too often, people tend to think that if you are a student from a historically black college or university, you're not prepared to succeed in the real world," she said. "What I've learned is that Hampton prepared me very well, and I'm very confident about going to graduate school to earn a graduate degree."

Brienne Adams, a senior from Beloit College in Wisconsin, said UCLA exposed her to a diversity that doesn't exist at her school. "We are still trying to establish African-American studies at Beloit," Adams said. The first African-American male professor received tenure at Beloit in 2004, followed by the first black female professor in 2005.

Students at the institute work with UCLA professors and graduate students to complete research projects. They also take seminars in African-American history, politics, culture and art.

"The program truly gives them a taste of what the graduate school experience is like," said Lisbeth Gant-Britton, student affairs officer with the Afro-American Studies Program and the institute's coordinator. "It exposes them to graduate seminars...and forces students to prepare for and take an active part in them."