The California Forums for Diversity in Graduate Education, planned by a consortium of public and private colleges and universities from throughout California, have been designed particularly to meet the needs of advanced undergraduates and master’s candidates who belong to groups that are currently underrepresented in doctoral-level programs. The groups include low-income and first-generation college students and especially African Americans, American Indians, Chicanos/Latinos, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, Asian American women, and Asian American men in the arts, humanities, and social and behavioral sciences (source).
The California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education had its origin in a series of meetings in 1990 among graduate deans and their staff from the University of California and California State University systems. The meetings focused on ways to enhance the recruitment of minority students into doctoral programs. The UC representatives especially wanted to attract more African American and Latino students. The CSU representatives wanted a broader pool of new Ph.D. recipients that would enable their campuses to recruit future faculty as diverse as the student populations they already served (source).
The 2015 California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education was held at UC Santa Barbara on Nov. 7. The all-day event drew over 1,300 students from approximately 220 public and private universities from across the United States. The UCSB Department of Geography helped man the MLPS table, and Geography graduate student Kevin Mwenda was one of four panelists who took part in a workshop titled “Life Science” that had the following description: “Different disciplines have different norms and ways of operating. The discipline-based panels are intended to provide students with an understanding of various aspects of graduate study within a given discipline group. For each discipline group, panelists offer insights on such topics as how to prepare strategically for admission into a graduate program within the discipline groups, what graduate programs typically entail (content, workload, process, time to degree), and career options (including a snapshot of the life of a faculty member). Panelists are faculty members and graduate students, and are asked to direct their remarks toward their specific disciplines without focusing too much on their own departments” (source: email from Geography graduate adviser Nicole McCoy who helped to organize the event).
Walter Boggan, the Director of Admissions & Outreach for the Graduate Division, summed up the event as follows: “On behalf of Dean Carol Genetti and the Graduate Division, the Southern California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education and myself…Thank You, Thank You, Thank You for your participation!!! We simply could not have done this without you! We were very proud to see our UC Santa Barbara graduate departments represented to the fullest during the Recruiters Fair. We have received nothing but positive reviews and we truly appreciate your devotion to diversity in graduate education.” (email from Nicole, Ibid.)
