Mission Statement:

The Center’s primary focus is to increase the diversity in science and mathematics, with diversity being broadly defined, to include factors such as ethnicity/race, gender, age, and socio-economic status.

Organization:

The Center, which is located in the College of Natural and Behavioral Sciences (NBS), also serve the needs of faculty in other Colleges. Dr. Leonardo Martinez is serving as the Director of the Center.  The Center will have an Advisory Board made up of faculty and administrators with backgrounds in science and mathematics as well as scientists/mathematicians from the community businesses, corporations and agencies, such as Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, LA Biomed, Genentech. The Advisory Board will offer guidance on policy issues.

Strengths and Successes:

A major strength of CSUDH is the diversity of its student body.  CSUDH is diverse on gender, age and race/ethnicity.  CSUDH’s student body has a higher proportion of females (70% for the last few years) as compared to other campuses and its students tend to be older.  For the last five years, the mean age of our students has ranged from 31.5 to 29.5 years of age, which is considerably higher than the “normal” college campus. For Fall of 2006, CSUDH had significant percentages of its students falling into the “older” age categories, with 19% being 25-29 years of age and with 36.4% being 30 years of age and older.  With regard to race/ethnicity, CSUDH has a large number of students from underrepresented groups and also, a large number of graduates going on to prestigious M.D. and Ph.D. programs.  For example, for Fall of 2006, significant percentages of students in undergraduate NBS majors were either African-American or Hispanic, two of the groups most underrepresented in the sciences and mathematics.  The percentages are as follows: Behavioral Sciences (African American = 57.5%; Hispanic = 22.5%); Biology (African American = 40.7%; Hispanic = 38.1%); Chemistry (African American = 29.4%; Hispanic = 43.1%); Computer Science (African American = 35.0%; Hispanic = 35.%); Geography (African American = 14.3%; Hispanic = 14.3%); Geology (African Americans = 20%; Hispanics = 30.0%); Mathematics (African American = 29.7%; Hispanic = 51.5%); Physics (African American = 25%; Hispanic = 50.0%); Psychology (African American = 40.6%; Hispanic = 43.5%); Sociology (African American = 40.5%; Hispanic = 44.5%).

Faculty from NBS are very active in successfully pursuing training grants aimed at increasing the number of minority and women students in the sciences.  These programs have been very successful in getting our minority and women students into medical and graduate school.  Students participating in these training programs also co-publish with CSUDH faculty in peer reviewed journals and give papers at professional meetings.  This kind of socialization into science and mathematics is the reason so many of our students involved in training grants are successful at getting into medical and graduate school.

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Last updated September 12, 2007 by mk