A LIFELINE GRAD STUDENTS for
Students from underrepresented communities find funding, social networks and academic support through the Graduate Opportunities & Minority Achievement Program. Now in its 50th year, GO-MAP continues in its mission to help current and future students overcome obstacles to success. BY HA NN ELORE S UD E R M A N N • P H O TO S B Y M ATT H AGE N
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N SPRING 2010, when Nick Hunt-Walker was considering graduate school, he flew to Seattle to check out the UW astronomy department. The native New Yorker was used to living and studying among African Americans, Hispanics and people of Caribbean descent. But when he got to campus he was struck by how much he and his community weren’t represented. Not only was he unsure whether he would fit in, he wasn't confident he had the stamina to move across the country, teach undergraduate classes and navigate a new university. Everything changed after he met with graduate students and faculty in astronomy. The planets aligned. A professor mentioned the UW’s Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program (GO-MAP), and said that Hunt-Walker would receive a fellowship with enough financial support that he wouldn’t have to teach or work as a research assistant his first year. With all the challenges of moving, learning the department, taking classes and acclimating to the school in general, having to teach would have overwhelmed him, Hunt-Walker says. “But with funding for the first year, GO-MAP had already set me up for success, and I hadn’t even become a student yet.” When Hunt-Walker returned that fall to start graduate school, he found new friends through GO-MAP who were having similar experiences. They formed a community and would meet up for meals and sometimes go out to minority-owned bars where he felt he could kick back and “just be my Blackademic self.” “I was in spaces with people who just got it,” he says. “And that support system stayed with me for the most difficult moments of the academic year.” When it comes to diversity, graduate schools around
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V I E W P O I N T : : U Wa l u m . c o m / v i e w p o i n t
the country struggle to find and recruit underrepresented minority students. And that is only the first challenge. Many first-generation students and those from low-income backgrounds may not even know that graduate school is an option. Then, once they do apply and arrive, they don’t find people who look like them or share their experience. They may feel isolated. The UW has about 14,500 graduate students. Of them, about 12.5 percent are underrepresented minorities. Often, in fields like astronomy, economics, political science, mechanical engineering and earth and space sciences, they are the only person—student or faculty—in the department with their racial or cultural background.
