Initiatives to recruit, prepare, or retain underrepresented minorities for PhD degrees in physics are on the rise. Some focus on providing research experience between undergraduate and graduate school; others offer professional and social support to students once they get into graduate school. One of these so-called bridge programs for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans is credited with putting Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, on pace to become a top producer of underrepresented minority PhD physicists and astronomers.
Vanderbilt owes that success to a partnership that began six years ago between its physics department and the one at Fisk University, a neighboring HBCU (historically black college and university) institution. “The Fisk–Vanderbilt master’s-to-PhD bridge program uses the master’s degree from Fisk as a way to fast-track students into Vanderbilt’s PhD program,” says the program’s codirector, Vanderbilt astronomy professor Keivan Stassun. It has also doubled the enrollment of Fisk’s physics master’s...