“No more than 50 percent of individuals across all groups complete the doctoral degree and two-thirds of all blacks pursuing doctoral programs do not complete the degree. This situation is unacceptable and must be changed” stated Provost and Chief Academic Officer Richard A. English recently at the inaugural luncheon for the Ph.D. Completion Project on the Howard campus. Howard was selected among 21 research universities and colleges across the nation to participate in the $2.6 million project funded by the US Department of Education Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). Supported by grants from Pfizer, Inc. and the Ford Foundation, the selected universities and colleges, called Research Partners, will receive awards of up to $100,000 to collect and submit data on doctoral completion; to create and pilot intervention strategies; and to evaluate the effect of these strategies on Ph.D. attrition patterns and completion rates.

Howard's retention, mentoring, and support program has received national recognition. The Graduate School will build upon these efforts with the Ph.D. Completion Project. The school has developed several first steps to meet this challenge, stated Orlando L. Taylor, vice provost for research and dean of the Graduate School , at the kick-off luncheon. These steps include tracking completion data on a specially designed web site, using completion findings in recruitment activities, providing mini-grants to departments for improving departmental faculty mentoring, and using graduate student completion and attrition data in the determination of monetary allocations to departments

“Most national data pertaining to graduation completion is at the undergraduate level; this project will bring our Howard colleagues together in an interdisciplinary setting to address the issue on the national level,” stated Dr. Taylor. He stated further that attrition rates, particularly among African Americans, may be due to a number of factors, among them inadequate financial resources (probably the most important), transferring from one program to another, ineffective advising and mentoring, and possibly a decision to pursue another career path altogether that does not require a Ph.D. degree. These issues have differing levels of applicability depending on the discipline. Participating Howard programs selected from the sciences, engineering, and mathematics (SEM); and the humanities and social science disciplines are biology, chemistry, history, mathematics, physics, communication and culture, communication sciences and disorders, and electrical and computer engineering. Howard produces a large percentage of the nation's Ph.D. recipients in the arts and humanities, social sciences and particularly in SEM disciplines.

Howard and the 20 other research universities selected as partners for the project were chosen in a competitive grant process by an external GSC Advisory Board, nominated by CGS, and comprised of leaders from academia, industry, disciplinary societies, funding agencies, and research programs on minority graduate education. The selected Research Partners represent the demographic diversity of doctoral education in the US and Canada , including private and public universities and minority-serving institutions. The nation's largest on-campus producer of African Americans with Ph.D. degrees, Howard is the only minority-serving institution selected to participate in this project. Other Research Partners are Arizona State University, University of California-Los Angeles, University of Cincinnati, Cornell University, Duke University, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, University of Michigan, University of Missouri-Columbia, North Carolina State University, University of Notre Dame, University of Louisville, University of Montreal, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Princeton University, Purdue University, Washington University-St. Louis, and Yale University. All partner institutions will meet semi-annually to share information and best practices with the broader graduate community.

Dr. Chontrese Doswell, assistant dean for retention, mentoring, and support services of the Graduate School , will join Dr. Taylor is heading the Howard project.

For more information on the national Ph.D. Completion Project, visit the project website at www.phdcompletion.org . For more information on the Howard University Ph.D. Completion Program and other related Ph.D. enhancement projects, visit www.gs.howard.edu .