While UW-Madison science graduate programs focus on recruitment and creating a welcoming climate for minority students, diversity numbers have remained constant.
Professor and former Physics Department Chair Susan Coppersmith said the difficulty with low diversity numbers is that it has gone on for decades and is a nation-wide problem in physics.
The amount of minority students in the physics program at UW decreased from 4.4 percent in 2000 to 1.9 percent in 2005 and then increased to 3.1 percent in 2008, according to the documents. This means there were 6 minority graduate students out of 135 in 2000, 3 minority graduates out of 161 in 2005 and 5 minority graduate students out of 159 in 2008.
""All of our students come with full support, so it's not a question of being financially supported… or increasing access,"" Coppersmith said.
Coppersmith emphasized the physic department's recruitment efforts of sending representatives to conferences that focus on minority students interested in science programs.
According to Coppersmith, the physics department also offers Advanced Opportunity Fellowships that are not specifically for minority students but the selection criteria are ""such that there is a higher representation of underrepresented groups for the fellowship.""
""It's true that our records are nowhere near where we want to be or even what many people believe is a reasonable fraction of underrepresented groups, but compared to other physics departments it is terrible for everybody,"" Coppersmith said.
Robert Hamers, chair of the chemistry department, said low diversity numbers is widely recognized in chemistry programs as well. In 2000, 4.6 percent of chemistry graduates were minority students, which was 11 minority graduate students out of 238. In 2008, the chemistry graduate program increased their diversity to 7.3 percent, which was 19 graduates out of 259 total graduates in the program.
""It's a very complicated problem, and a large part of it is that underrepresented minorities are underrepresented in the sciences at the undergraduate level,"" Hamers said.
According to Hamers, UW as a whole does not have as much of a sense of community so when underrepresented groups get here they do not always feel there is a community of people, and that hurts UW's recruitment.
Hamers said the chemistry department has sent students to the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers for recruitment efforts, but added that a more cost-effective way to recruit is to build partnerships with other graduate schools focused on research.
""We are trying to build a relationship that will have a pipeline of students that we can start getting here for graduate study,"" Hamers said.
According to him, the chemistry department participates in the National Science Foundation Partners in Research Education program, which couples a minority-serving institution with a non-minority-serving institution and facilitates exchange of students to work on collaborative research.
The chemistry department also has the Research Experience for Undergraduates program that brings undergraduates to campus for a summer to work on research with a faculty member to encourage them to apply for graduate school at UW, said Hamers.
""REU is open to anyone irrespective of socioeconomic background or minority status, but we do particularly try to encourage underrepresented groups to come,"" Hamers said. ""We don't want to bring students here to fill a quota, we want to be sure the students will succeed.""
""We've also seen the number of applications from schools where our REU students are from increase because of the experience we've given them,"" said Chemistry Department Faculty Associate Andrew Greenberg.
According to Greenberg, offering the summer program shows students they can be successful, which can be a factor in their decision of where to apply.
Hamers said when a qualified student from an underrepresented minority is interested in graduate school at UW, the chemistry department might offer a signing incentive to encourage them, but ""above some threshold it is usually not about money.""
""Offering them a signing bonus versus paying for them to come visit during the summer where they can really get a taste of what the environment is like and interact with faculty is probably a more effective way of spending money,"" said Hamers.
According to Hamers, the chemistry department has worked to recruit underrepresented minorities at the faculty level to have as role models for students. ""We try to be sure that we are doing a good job representing what the face of the U.S. looks like,"" Hamers said.
