Arizona State University has soared in the number of master’s and doctoral degrees awarded to minority students, according to figures just published in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. The magazine’s annual rankings of “The Top 100 Graduate Degree Producers” were published in its July 8 issue and are based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

For the first time, ASU ranks first in the nation for doctoral degrees awarded to Native Americans, as well as ninth in master’s degrees awarded. Download Full Image

Among Hispanic students, ASU ranks fifth in doctorates awarded and 19th in master’s degrees. These rankings are substantial increases from 2009, when ASU ranked 12th in doctorates and 36th in number of master’s degrees.

ASU ranks 54 nationally for doctorates awarded to African Americans, an improvement over the previous year in which ASU did not place in the top 100. The total number of doctorates awarded to African Americans increased by 200 percent.

These rankings reflect total number of degrees awarded in all disciplines combined. Within specific programs of study, ASU rankings include:

• Doctorates awarded to Native Americans in education rank No. 1

• Doctorates awarded to Hispanics in education rank No. 3, in engineering No. 4 and in physical sciences No. 5

• Doctorates awarded to Asian Americans in education rank No. 14, in psychology No. 15 and in engineering No. 19.

• For Hispanics, master’s degrees awarded in mathematics and statistics rank No. 1, and business and management rank No. 25.

• For Native Americans, master’s degrees awarded for business and education both rank No. 12

• Law degrees awarded to Native Americans rank No. 8

Ethnic minority students who are underrepresented in graduate studies are aspiring to advanced degrees in greater numbers, said Maria T. Allison, vice-provost and dean of the Graduate College. Of the more than 13,000 graduate students attending ASU, nearly 19 percent are from underrepresented or minority ethnic groups. Five years ago, minority students represented only about 15 percent of total graduate student enrollment.

“We are very committed to creating an environment in which all students can thrive and reach their fullest potential,” Allison said. “ASU offers a wide range of social and academic support, which can be particularly important for ethnic minorities and first-generation students.”

Services and support for graduate students include SHADES, a peer-to-peer multicultural mentoring program; Social and Academic Mentoring (SAM); Diversity Across the Curriculum (DAC) seminar series; and the Gates Millennium Scholars Organization (GMSO).

Among the many ASU resources for minority undergraduate and graduate students is Multicultural Student Services, the Native American Achievement Program, the Hispanic Business Students Association, the One Nation Club at the Polytechnic campus, the Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program, and American Indian Student Support Services.

Two students in Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering have won an international award for a poster exhibiting their heart disease research.

Doctoral student Haithem Babiker and undergraduate Jonathan Plasencia, both bioengineering majors, earned the 2010 Mimics Innovation Award for the poster detailing research into congenital heart disease. Download Full Image

The Mimics award is given by Materialise Inc., based in Belgium, an industrial and medical technology company, to promote innovation in medical procedures and computer-aided engineering.

Each year the international competition assembles a panel of judges from industry and academia to examine bioengineering research studies from around the world. Judges take into account the potential economic and social impact of new ideas, as well as the degree of innovation and the quality of research.

The students' poster presents a new method to aid surgeons in repairing anatomical abnormalities known as tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect that limits a patient’s ability to oxygenate blood.

The method involves the use of pre-operative cardiac computerized-tomography images and computational fluid dynamic simulations to aid in preparation for surgery.

Babiker said this method has the potential to improve pre-operative planning, decrease stress on the surgeon, limit surgical time, lower surgical costs and significantly improve the chances of successful surgeries.

Juan Medrano, who is pursuing his doctoral degree in leadership and innovation through Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, is a 2010 recipient of the Outstanding Principal Award from the Arizona Hispanic School Administrators Association (AHSAA).

Medrano, a native of Tolleson, Ariz., serves as principal at Porfirio H. Gonzales Elementary School, which he attended as a child. Download Full Image

“This award is a great honor,” Medrano said. “It recognizes the dedication that we have as a school to continuously improving our practice as educators to facilitate high levels of learning for our students.”

Teachers College faculty members who work with Medrano were not surprised to see him honored for his achievements.

“Juan is a top-notch student. He is disciplined, thorough, contemplative and caring,” said Teresa Foulger, associate professor in the division of teacher preparation on ASU’s West campus.

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His students are benefiting from a remarkable role model who is furthering his professional competencies through doctoral studies,” Foulger said. “In just two more years Juan will be Dr. Medrano, an indicator of how focused he is on educating the finest.”

Added Debby Zambo, associate professor in the division of educational leadership and innovation, “Juan has displayed a strong interest in raising teachers’ efficacy. His action research during the spring semester focused on helping his teachers align their assignments and create meaningful assessments.”

Medrano, a 1991 graduate of Tolleson Union High School, spent five years as a math teacher and one year as an assistant principal in the Tolleson Elementary School District (TESD). He has served as principal at P.H. Gonzales for the past four years.

Last year P.H. Gonzales earned a “performing plus” label. In nominating Medrano for the AHSAA award, the TESD leadership team noted, “Mr. Medrano has a focus and determination to see his students succeed that is unwavering.” According to Superintendent Bill Christensen, “Mr. Medrano is a true instructional leader whom you will find in classrooms working side by side with staff.”

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My motivation to become an educator came from my family,” Medrano said. “My grandfather was a catechism teacher and worked in the tire business for more than 35 years. He always emphasized the importance of education to me and my siblings as a way to expand our life opportunities. My father has also been a career educator and athletic coach throughout my upbringing.”

The influence of family also inspired Medrano to pursue his Ed.D. degree, he said. “The emphasis of the importance of education and service to my community from my family has resonated with me throughout my life. Their encouragement inspired me to pursue education formally and informally throughout my life.  From my experience in the Ed.D. program I hope to continue to grow professionally and apply my learning from the program to improve collaboration with my colleagues at P.H. Gonzales Elementary School.”

The Ed.D. program in leadership and innovation, offered on ASU’s West campus by the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, is a three-year cohort program that prepares educational researchers who are interested in working as educational leaders in K-12, higher education, or business environments. The program focuses on action research projects that begin in the first year of study and culminate with the dissertation. Students engage in multiple on-site research cycles to implement change and study the results. Details about the program are available at http://teach.asu.edu/doctoral_ed.  

AHSAA">http://teach.asu.edu/doctoral_ed">http://teach.asu.edu/doctoral_ed.&..., which recognized Medrano with its Outstanding Principal Award, works to create and provide professional development and support programs for Hispanic educational leaders. More information about the organization may be found at http://azhsaa.org/.">http://azhsaa.org/">http://azhsaa.org/.

You’re a high school student of European descent, and it’s the first day of your senior lit class.

Your teacher passes out the reading list for the semester: Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony.” Louise Erdrich’s “The Plague of Doves,” and N. Scott Momaday’s “House Made of Dawn.”
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Wait a minute. What happened to Shakespeare, Steinbeck and Melville? The books on this list are all by Native American authors!

David, a student at Westwood High School in Mesa, was ready to drop out of school at the end of his junior year. He didn’t need those boring senior classes.

But then David, a Pima/Ute, heard that teacher Andi Box planned to offer a class in Native American literature in the spring, and he quickly changed his mind.

“He was the first one to sign up. “Midway through the semester he told me, ‘I come to school for this class. I deal with the other ones,’” Box said.

Box’s class, a pilot project created with the help of ASU English faculty members James Blasingame and Simon Ortiz, is the first literature class in the Mesa Public Schools (MPS) to focus entirely on Native American authors and texts.

It grew out of the Beta Project, part of ASU’s Educational Partnerships initiative, whose goal is to provide a continually increasing Web-based “treasure of resources for the teaching of English language arts,” said Blasingame.

After the Beta Project was launched, Cliff Moon, MPS’s director of diversity, asked Blasingame if ASU could help create a Native American curriculum, since there are a good number of Native American students in the district.

“Westwood High School has the highest native population, so we took the grants there,” Blasingame said. “We had some money to buy books so we bought Sherman Alexie’s book, ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian,’ and Andi did a pilot project on his book. Alexie went to Westwood, where he spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of students.”

About that time, Ortiz, a nationally known poet and member of the Acoma tribe, joined the ASU English faculty, and Blasingame asked him to chair a consortium to put together a course.

“I became aware that the Phoenix area had many Native Americans when I moved here in 2006,” Ortiz said. “I was curious about the curriculum in Mesa Public Schools. I was involved in a public school curriculum project in Portland, Ore., in 1989-90, so I knew it was possible to do it in other places.”

Planning for the first course took several years and included librarians from the Pima-Salt River, McDowell and Gila reservations, ASU faculty and graduate students, tribal leaders and administrators from MPS.

The pilot class focused on regional Native American literature of the Southwest, and included material from books such as “Rising Voices,” by Beverly Singer, a collection of poems and essays by young Native Americans about their identity, rituals and the harsh realities of their lives; “Code Talkers,” a novel for young adults by Joseph Bruchac (which the students didn’t want to put down, Box said), and Alexie’s novel, as well as films such as “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.”

Class units have included “Finding Our Warriors, Finding Our Beliefs”; “Finding Our Inner Poetry”; “Finding True Education”; “Finding Frustration: The Rise in Indian Activism”; and “Finding Our Future.”

The class brought tears and laughter to the students, as well as anger and pride.

There were 36 students in the class (and only 34 desks but no student wanted to drop out), of which 12 were Native American, from the Apache, O'odham, Ute, Pima-Maricopa, Navajo, Hopi, Creek, Tewa and Zuni.

Box started by having each student read a 13-page packet about Native American historical events that have seldom been talked about in history or literature classes. “From that information, they then had to choose what they thought were the top 20 most important historical events that all high school students should know about before they graduate.

“When we talked about the 1864 massacre at Sand Creek, for example, they were shocked,” Box said. “They asked, ‘Why has our history been whitewashed?’”

The students created 12-foot-long timelines, using their “top-20 events,” which they displayed around the school.

“I had many teachers and students come to my classroom and say ‘Thank you for teaching the truth,’” Box said.

The students also made posters, brought in Native dishes to share, created pictures to symbolize themselves, and wrote stories or poems about themselves. Box said she focused on both the positive and negative sides of Native American history.

For some of the Native American students, it was the first time they had read or seen an outsider’s view of their history.

“The students said they like the class because they got to hear how people were reacting to their history,” Box said.
“One student commented, ‘Every time we watch something in here it shocks me.’ A Hispanic student told me that she had cried three times in the class.”

The pilot class gave Box an idea of what should be included in the curriculum – and also what is needed as a foundation for the class.

“We have to learn some history first, before studying literature,” she explained, “such as how many tribes there are in the United States, and in Arizona.”

That Box is excited about the first class and others to come is evident by her e-mail notes, which are filled with exclamation points.

“There is too much to learn and not enough time!” she said. “I think next year I am going to have this class as a full year, with the senior writing class folded into it. Yay!

“We are all learning from each other, and it is such a joyous experience!”

Box wanted the initial class to be offered for senior students “due to the level of content and critical thinking I am expecting of my students,” she said, but Gary Loutzenheiser, acting education division director for the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, suggested that senior year might be too late for some students.

“Among Native American communities, we have a lot of kids who don’t make it to the sophomore and junior years. They don’t have a chance to jump in and understand their heritage,” he said. “Such a class would bolster their pride, help them feel better about themselves – and stay in school.”

For Box and the consortium, the work will begin again in June.

“We’ll start the whole process over again with a social studies class,” said Blasingame. “The long-range plans are to develop appropriate curriculum for all ages so that Native American history and culture are infused into classes for younger students, as well as older ones.”

The hard work will pay off when every student in Arizona routinely learns about the Native communities around them, Blasingame added.

“Eventually, we hope to follow in the footsteps of the Montana Office of Public Instruction and make Native American curriculum a part of the state standards.”

It was a close call for David, but, thanks to the Beta Project and Box’s enthusiasm, he made it to graduation – and into boot camp for the Air Force.