Moving beyond Black Achiever Isolation

Abstract

Those who seek to understand the experiences of Black students on White campuses in the United States have far more information available to them at the close of the twentieth century than could have ever been imagined at the beginning. Because of the tremendous social, political, economic, and educational changes in our society over the past thirty years there has been an expansion in the study of Blacks in all aspects of the American culture. Not surprisingly, education has played a central role in increasing our knowledge about the lives and experiences of Blacks. Research that has focused on Black students on predominately White campuses overwhelmingly reveals a story of academic difficulty (Fleming, 1984; Nettles, 1988; Mow & Nettles, 1990; Allen, 1992). Consequently much of the research on Black students has focused on those who have pronounced academic needs and who are perceived as academically less prepared than their White counterparts. The disproportionate focus on Black underachievement in the literature not only distorts the image of the community of Black collegians, it creates, perhaps unintentionally, a lower set of expectations for Black student achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine, through extensive interviews, the academic, social, and racial experiences of high-achieving Black students enrolled in the Meyerhoff Program, a merit-based scholarship program for students in math, science, and engineering. Interview questions (explained below) were focused around three broad areas: academic experiences in and outside of the classroom, social interactions and relationships with peers/faculty, and experiences in, and perceptions of, a race specific program. Established in 1989, the Meyerhoff program initially was developed to address the underrepresentation of Black males in the hard sciences. In 1990 the first class of Black females was admitted, and in 1996 the program was expanded to include other minority and White students. At the time of this writing, there were eight classes of Meyerhoffs enrolled in the program. High ability in this study was defined by conventional measures such as Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores and Grade Point Average (GPA). The cohort of Meyerhoffs interviewed had an average high-school GPA of 3.5 on a 4.0 scale, average SAT math score of 621, and the average SAT total score was 1198. The fall semester average GPA in the senior year was 3.0. This study is based on interviews with the class of 1990, the second class of Meyerhoffs and the first to admit female students. The 1990 class enrolled 15 students, of whom 14 persisted to the senior year, and 12 students (6 males and 6 females) participated in the 60-90 minute interviews. The Meyerhoff program provides an enormous level of support for the students. There are thirteen different components of the program, including full, or in some cases (for affiliate scholars) partial, scholarship support, study groups, tutoring, personal and academic advising, and connections with mentors in the field who can help with career issues and internship placement. For a description of the program and the services it provides, see Fries-Britt (1997) and Hrabowski, Maton, and Greif (1998). Factors Affecting the Academic Success of Gifted Blacks Much of what we know about gifted Black students in general comes from the work of scholars who study Black students in elementary, junior high, and high-school environments. The scant research on gifted collegians combined with the limited research on Black adolescents and high-school students provides some insight into the issues encountered by this population. Like other students, gifted Black students face social-emotional adjustment issues, such as self-concept and acceptance by peers (Rubenzer, 1976; Baldwin, 1991; Roeper, 1991). For gifted Blacks the issues of self-concept are different from those of other Blacks and gifted White students (Exum, 1979). …