Invisible Student Scientists

Robert Leslie Fisher was educated in New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School, a special school for science-oriented students, and has degrees in sociology from City College of New York (B.A. cum laude), and Columbia University (M. Phil.). Prior to retiring in 2003, Fisher had a varied career as a criminal justice planner, research contracts officer, and program evaluator in New York State government. He is now an author and director of a nonprofit consulting organization in the Capital District of New York. Fisher is the author of three previous nonfiction books about the gender gap in science, all published by University Press of America, and has contributed articles on medical research. He also published Vanilla Republic, a mystery novel.

In this book, Robert Leslie Fisher contends that thanks to misguided university and government policies, we have created a science elite that does not represent the demographics of the nation. We need to recruit more native-born women and underrepresented minorities into graduate programs in order to maintain our nation's prosperity and military strength. Fisher draws on sample data from 1300 male and female respondents from White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian students. He shows how the student culture of graduate schools in science and engineering sees women, Black, and Hispanic students as outsiders and deprives these budding scientists and research engineers of the collaborators they need to succeed in their careers. Fisher argues that we must inspire female, Black, and Hispanic graduate students to believe they can succeed in their careers by (1) changing the student culture in graduate schools' science and engineering programs to be more inclusive, (2) removing burdensome undergraduate educational duties from graduate students so that they can concentrate on mastering the difficult subject matter of their disciplines, and (3) hiring more women and under-represented minorities as faculty to serve as role models.

List of TablesForewordPrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter One: Theoretical Orientation and Study PlanChapter Two: Cosseted White Males RevisitedChapter Three: Women Graduate Students: Some Are More EqualThan OthersChapter Four: Are (White) Men Better Professors and Scientists?Chapter Five: Conclusions and Policy ImplicationsBibliographyIndex