An AGEP program analysis: Minority graduate student diversity in STEM disciplines at three maryland universities

The Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) is a federally funded initiative facilitated by the National Science Foundation [3]. AGEP addresses the need to recruit and retain underrepresented minorities to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The University System of Maryland´s (USM) PROMISE AGEP-T, a transformative initiative of the AGEP, is a program that includes all of the public universities within the USM. This program started with an initial alliance between three universities: the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB), and the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP). The PROMISE AGEP requires campuses to develop activities in three focus areas: 1) new graduate student cultivation; 2) community building that supports students and helps them excel academically; 3) professional development [12]. The Universities are encouraged to collaborate with each other to support student success with the goal of promoting successful recruitment, retention, graduation, and professorial training of participants. This paper links four theoretical retention frameworks to the intended outcomes of the PROMISE AGEP. An overview of Tinto´s (1993) theory of individual departure [16], Giuffrida´s (2006) self determination and job involvement theories [6], Bean and Eaton´s (2000) psychological model [17], and Padilla´s (1997) heuristic knowledge model [14] is presented and subsequently tied to PROMISE AGEP goals and outcomes with a discussion about the usefulness of linking theory to practice.