Getting to Your Goal:

Are You on Target?

Almost all universities have a goal to increase the diversity of their STEM graduate students, which means increasing the percent of new STEM graduate enrollees who are underrepresented minorities (URM). For some institutions the goal may be to have the percent of new graduate enrollees who are URM reflect the population as a whole, which in 2008 was about 27%. Others may want their graduate population to reflect the percent of their URM undergraduates or have another goal in mind. Having a goal is important, but to be useful you really need to have a time frame in which you want to achieve that goal – be it one year, five years, ten years, or more. Once you have a goal and a time frame, this tool can help you look at the progress you’ve made toward your goal and/or see what numbers you will need annually in order to achieve your goal within your time frame. The tool can be used to help manage the goals of an individual department, school, or institution as a whole.

To use the tool:

Enter your goal for the percent of NEW enrollees who will be URM. %
Enter, your starting year, i.e.,the first year for which you want to enter data. If you want to look at progress to date, then you need to start with an earlier year, perhaps the year you started participating in AGEP. If you are planning to focus more on what is needed to reach future diversity goals, you may want to use this academic year as your starting year.
Enter the year in which you want to achieve your goal percent of URM NEW enrollees.
Enter the number of URM students who were NEW enrollees in your starting year.     
Enter the number of total NEW enrollees in your starting year.     
Either enter your current annual percent growth or decline in STEM student enrollment or give an estimate of projected annual percent growth or decline. If you don’t expect a change, enter 0. If you expect a decline, enter a negative number. %

To reach your goal, you need an annual increase of URM new enrollees of:

Academic Year
URM New
Enrollees
All New
Enrollees
Percent URM
New Enrollees