This grant extends the Foundation's American Indian Graduate Program beyond the University of Arizona and the University of Montana to include an institution more likely to prove attractive to the large Indian population in the eastern half of the country. Purdue University's Tecumseh Project is a campus-wide project directed at increasing the number of undergraduate and graduate Indian students in all disciplines. This grant will support aspects of the project limited to M.S. and Ph.D. students in mathematics, science, engineering and technology and will be focused on Indian students from tribes east of the Mississippi. Purdue has employed a full-time American Indian Director of the program and has guaranteed that all students accepted into the Sloan graduate program will be provided with a half-time assistantship, including health insurance. The university has developed strong relationships to feeder institutions and tribes. Several tribes have agreed to allow access to tribal lands for Indian students who wish to conduct thesis research there, an attractive option for tribal members who plan to return home to community jobs after earning applicable graduate degrees. Grant funds will mainly be used for recruitment and retention efforts. Eligible students would be funded (currently at $32,100 for M.S. and $38,500 for Ph.D. students) as they enter their graduate programs. As with the Foundation's minority Ph.D. and American Indian Graduate Programs, these scholarships will be paid and managed by the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. Project Director: Professor George Parker, Department of Forestry and Natural Resources.

Since 1998, the Foundation has provided funding to the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) to enable students in the Minority Ph.D. Program who aspire to academic careers and a smaller number of associated faculty members to attend SREB's annual Institute on Teaching and Mentoring. Starting in 2005, SREB also invited students in the Foundation's American Indian Graduate Program to attend the Institute. Past experience suggests that student attendees are indeed those who have decided or are seriously considering academic careers and that attendance at the Institute both reinforces this aspiration and also increases the prospect of success. It also appears that in the absence of funding, most eligible students and faculty in the Foundation's programs would not be able to attend the Institute. This grant renews support for this project for another three years. Project Director: Ansley Abraham, Director, Doctoral Scholars Program.

A 2003 grant supported the launching of a special program for American Indian graduate students at the University of Arizona and funded the recruitment and retention components of the program. The goal of this program was to increase the number of American Indian students earning M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics, science, and engineering disciplines. (Since then, the program has been extended to the University of Montana and most recently to Purdue University.) The Foundation's contribution to these programs is mainly limited to support for the universities' special efforts first to recruit American Indian graduate students and then to create a campus environment that will increase the likelihood that they will complete the graduate programs in which they are enrolled. This grant renews this program for another three years. The grant will support a full-time person to run the recruitment and retention program and also a specially designed tutoring program for the students that has proved very valuable during past years. Going forward, the University expects to attract five new Ph.D. and six new M.S. American Indian students each year. Graduate students accepted into the program receive scholarships that are paid and managed by the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering under separate funding. Project Director: Maria Teresa Velez, Associate Dean, Graduate College.

The following grant was made from an appropriation approved by the Board of Trustees to fund the Foundation's minority Ph.D. program and the American Indian program.

To fund a conference of participants in the Sloan Foundation's minority Ph.D. program. Project Director: Dwight E. Lewis, Director of Minority Programs, The Graduate School.

To help launch a pilot summer research program intended to encourage and prepare minority and women students to enter Ph.D. programs in applied mathematics. Project Director: Professor Steven H. Strogatz, Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.

To disseminate the results of a survey of the demographics of faculty in university science and engineering departments, with special emphasis on dissemination to minority organizations and faculty. Project Director: Professor Donna Nelson, Department of Chemistry.

To launch an effort to develop the next generation of social science researchers who work on issues of minority representation in mathematics, science and engineering. Project Director: Angela Ginorio, Associate Professor of Women Studies.