Dear Provost Robel, Vice President Wimbush, and Dean Van Kooten:

We are writing to applaud you for your recent efforts to secure funding for the Holland summer science programs for underrepresented minorities—and to encourage ongoing efforts to secure their long-term viability and growth. The programs represent one of our most important and successful minority recruitment programs, and are especially deserving of support in this critical moment.

We write on behalf of Concerned Scientists @ IU, a non-partisan campus and community organization consisting of over 1200 members—scientists, students, and supporters of science—from Indiana University and the surrounding region. Concerned Scientists @ IU is dedicated to strengthening the essential role of science in public policy and evidence-based decision making. In recent days, we, like other science advocacy organizations around the country, have committed our organization to work to ensure that the opportunities and benefits of science are shared equitably for the betterment of all in society, and that dignity, equity, diversity, and opportunity become fundamental cornerstones of our work as scientists and as advocates for science. We find ourselves in the first days of that commitment encountering an issue that we believe resonates with those aspirational goals.

Background
We start with the recognition that the demographic composition of researchers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields is highly skewed from the demographic composition of the United States as a whole. In many cases the disparities are jarring, have persisted over decades, and transcend academic hierarchies. As a consequence, many ethnic and racial minorities consistently miss out on the career opportunities STEM training would afford them, and entire disciplines miss out on the talents, perspectives, and ideas a diverse workforce would contribute. Indiana University is no exception.

Despite sincere efforts on the part of many individuals and offices across the IU campus, and despite the existence of several programs dedicated to enhance minority recruitment and retention in STEM disciplines, progress has been slow, or sometimes lacking altogether. Among the many challenges that such efforts encounter is (i) the fact that much interest in STEM fields among underrepresented groups is lost well before students make college decisions, (ii) building a STEM identity when role models are missing requires deliberate, repeated and diverse experiences, and (iii) once minority students enter college subsequent support and mentoring is often, at best, highly uneven.

A pipeline of three programs named in honor of beloved IU Professor James P. Holland have confronted these challenges head on, and with much success.

· The James Holland Summer Enrichment Program (SEP), which recruits up to 60 8th and 9th grade students every summer to spend one week on campus for a broad introduction to the life sciences.

· The James Holland Summer Science Research Program (SSRP), which returns the top 25 SEP (or equivalently qualified) students the following year for a week-long personalized internship in a research lab. Students design and execute a small, independent research project, and present their findings at a public poster conference. While participating in the SSRP, students form important connections between the teaching of science (i.e., the content material they are exposed to in class) and the practice of science (i.e., how such content is generated in the first place), and - most importantly - their own abilities as active science practitioners.

· The James Holland Research Initiative in STEM Education (RISE) program, which returns the top 10 SSRP students now as rising high school seniors, for a final, 2-week introduction to diverse disciplines, such as virology, plant genetics, mathematics, atmospheric sciences, supercomputing, hydrology, evolutionary developmental biology, and ecology. Each day small groups of faculty and graduate students present a new discipline, its overarching objectives and methodologies, and concrete examples of undergraduate research opportunities available to Holland students should they choose to attend IU. This third program establishes a critical bridge to college for our best Holland students, reinforces their exposure to STEM as a career option, helps cement their STEM identities, highlights Indiana University as a welcoming and supportive academic environment, and introduces students to scholarship programs and support networks available to them once on campus.

All programs have been highly successful: for example, of 161 students participating in the SSRP so far 141 have graduated (the remainder are still in school) and all 141 are now attending college, the majority of whom major in STEM (97/141; 69%). The inaugural 2015 class of ten RISE fellows collectively earned $783,855 in support funds once they applied for college admissions. And an impressive 12/59 students old enough to have graduated from college are now attending medical/dental/veterinary school or graduate school.

The Current Situation
There is much room to grow for all three programs, but recent developments not only threatened this growth, but the programs in their entirety. On April 1, 2020 and within days of announcing the shutdown of the IU campus due to the pandemic, program directors were informed that funding for all three programs was eliminated until 2025. The reasons given for this cut emphasized the uncertainty of the financial impact of the pandemic on the university. Very fortunately, since then and with your leadership, the original funding level had been restored. This welcome collaborative effort now promises that at least a subset of programs will be able to proceed in 2021. However, funding beyond 2021 remains entirely uncertain and not even tentative commitments have been offered.

On behalf of the 1200 members of Concerned Scientists @ IU, we believe that the university must make a commitment for continuity and long-term funding for the Holland programs. Now is the time to fully secure the support these programs need long-term, to expand their reach, and to build on their successes to further enhance their mission.

In fact, we encourage you to strongly consider creating a fourth Holland Program aimed at IU undergraduates, that emulates the principals of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County whose extraordinary success has been detailed in a recent article in Science Magazine. Doing so would establish a critical and still much-needed bridge from students’ undergraduate experience in STEM fields to professional and graduate school. Furthermore, at this point all three Holland programs are run by part time directors Mary Ann Tellas, a High School teacher based in Indianapolis, and IU Biology faculty Armin Moczek, with part-time staff support from the Biology Department. The Holland programs deserve a dedicated full-time Program Director able to fully realize their potential contributions to this University. We understand that to start and make sustainable such initiatives will require a commitment of resources and a willingness to engage in dedicated, long-term fundraising efforts, at a time when the financial strength of the University is under siege. But this is also an opportunity for IU to demonstrate true leadership at a time when it is most urgently needed.

We are certain that a positive and constructive solution can be found, and we welcome further discussion of this most urgent and timely issue.

Yours,

Michael Hamburger

Deidra Miniard

Co-chairs, CSIU Steering Committee

On behalf of Concerned Scientists @IU