My memory isn’t what it used to be, but when I saw this photo in Science magazine (15 May 2015, “Pioneers of the final frontier” by the late Dr. Claudia Alexander) I was tossed for a loop because I remember this photo so well. I was there.
I wasn’t in the photo myself (obviously), but this photo of Caltech’s Black Student Union in 1975, could have been taken right outside my dorm window on the tiny Caltech campus and it appeared in college publications almost immediately after it was taken. The photo shows 4 members of the BSU, and in the center, the instantly recognizable face of that most energetic of Caltech personalities: Lee Browne.
Lee Browne was an amazing figure on the Caltech campus. He wasn’t a professor or a student. He wasn’t known for making scientific discoveries. But he was a teacher, and he believed firmly in the worth of every individual. He had made it his mission to convince Caltech that a student’s potential could be measured by something other than SAT scores, and he did more than anyone to push open the doors of academic opportunity at Caltech. (For the record, 1970’s Caltech was a very insular and conservative-thinking campus that had only started admitting female undergraduates in 1970; the flow of women and underrepresented students would stay a trickle at Caltech for many years after I graduated.)
‘Underrepresented’ is still an adjective that accurately describes the presence of women and racial minorities in science and technology professions in the U.S.. Dr. Alexander, in her article, focuses on the picture from 40 years ago:
In 1973, for example, minority groups made up just 5.6% of the total staff at NASA, while the government workforce, as a whole, averaged 20%. This is not for lack of qualified individuals, as shown in the accompanying photograph, taken of the Black Student Union at Caltech in 1975. All of the students shown were training in a variety of technical fields. If potential hirees were matriculating through quality institutions, albeit in small numbers, one wonders what more NASA could have done to combat institutionalized discrimination and attract more qualified candidates.
Progress has been made, but it has been slow, agonizing progress, and hugely and painfully frustrating for the talented individuals who encounter the locked doors, the glass ceilings, and the other barriers, that have kept them from realizing their potential.
Just getting into Caltech was a lifetime achievement for the 4 students shown in the photo (it was for me!), but the challenge of staying at Caltech and earning a degree may not have been recognized by Dr. Alexander. When I was a student in the 70’s only about 50% of admitted students ever graduated from Caltech, and the graduation rate may have been even lower for underrepresented minorities. The “small numbers” that Dr. Alexander alludes to were very small indeed, at least at Caltech.
Interestingly, Caltech has made tremendous gains in its graduation rate, while it is my long-time employer, Reed College, that needs to play catch-up. When I arrived at Reed in 1989 the College’s 4-year graduation rate was well below 50%, while the 6-year graduation rate hovered in the mid-60% range. I felt like I had been tossed into a time machine, but Reed, like Caltech, has made slow, steady progress, finally achieving a 70% 4-year graduation rate in 2011. And, I’m happy to say, our administration is committed to doing even better.
The question is: how do we get there? One tool that has been touted is “more selective admissions,” but admitting only the slam-dunk, can’t-miss students just inserts another barrier into higher education. We need to find a better way if we are ever going to dismantle all of the lingering forms of “institutionalized discrimination.”
