By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Page A01 The Washington Post
Saturday, May 10 1997;
NEW ORLEANS -- Dwana Lynch, a graduate of Prince George’s County’s Oxon Hill High School, could have had her pick of colleges when she went looking to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor four years ago. She spurned offers from several nationally acclaimed universities to come to a relatively obscure, modestly endowed institution called Xavier.
In many ways, she could not have made a better choice. For the past four years, this small Catholic university has led the nation in placing African Americans into medical school, and virtually all of them go on to become doctors.
When Lynch graduates today, she will join at least 55 of her black classmates who are on their way to medical school. And if the last few years are any indication, that will be more than Harvard, or Cornell or Duke or Stanford or any other premier school.
Xavier’s success is rapidly becoming the envy of educators around the country, many of whom are struggling to attract and retain African American students. That task has grown more intense in the face of growing political and legal pressure to abandon traditional affirmative action programs that permit the admission of minority students with lower test scores.
So what has made Xavier so successful?
Its formula, according to the university and other academics, is not so different from that of other successful historically black colleges: Rather than adopting the sink-or-swim attitude toward incoming students, the approach leans more toward nurture and assist. And if a student is not doing well, the schools make it their mission to blaze a path to success.
Though they often have smaller budgets and students with less impressive high school records and much higher levels of financial need, black colleges continue to produce a disproportionate share of black graduate and professional school students.
Led by Xavier’s 77 students, black colleges claimed three of the
top four places among colleges sending African Americans to
medical school in 1996. They also accounted for 17 of the top 21
undergraduate schools in producing African Americans who obtain
doctoral degrees. In engineering and the sciences, black
colleges are among nine of the 11 leading producers of African
American students who go on to receive doctoral degrees.
"Historically black colleges have been doing a great deal more with less for generations," said H. Patrick Swygert, president of Howard University. "We have a tradition of taking students who may not have qualified elsewhere in terms of SAT scores, but who showed promise and were able to blossom in a supportive and nurturing atmosphere."
It is not merely that these schools are simply producing more African American graduates because so many more of their students are black. They also manage to graduate a higher percentage of the students they admit.
In 1995, nearly a quarter of the 1,798 African Americans who earned PhDs were black college graduates, while the nation’s 104 historically black colleges enrolled only about 17 percent of black college freshmen.
"For the most part, we are dealing with first-generation students who may not always be aware of the support systems and opportunities that are available," said Earl S. Richardson, president of Morgan State University in Baltimore. "So we kind of take them in our care and provide a nurturing environment that makes them comfortable."
President Clinton is scheduled to speak at Morgan’s May 18 commencement about the central role played by historically black colleges in training engineers and scientists -- fields where African Americans are severely underrepresented.
Daryl G. Smith, a professor at Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, Calif., who has studied the success of black colleges, says part of the success formula lies in the mind-set of the educators who run the institutions.
"These schools exude a belief in a student’s capacity to succeed. Implicit on too many campuses is the feeling that some can do it and some can’t."
Not at Xavier. It’s president, Norman C. Francis, abides by the opposite philosophy: Everyone can do it, and his job is to figure out how.
"It is not important who comes in," said Francis. "What is important is who graduates from an institution."
Xavier set out to improve its science program two decades ago, when several professors expressed alarm about the low number of graduates who were going on to medical school or graduate study. Then, Xavier was sending only about a half-dozen students a year to medical school.
The professors found many incoming students to be unprepared for the rigors of college-level math and science classes, so they created intensive summer workshops for area high schools juniors and seniors to develop the students’ problem-solving skills. Many of those students ended up attending Xavier.
The school, with an enrollment of about 2,800, has small classes that allow professors close contact with students. It also developed a highly structured freshman science curriculum that lays out precise learning goals and features built-in remedial education that attempts to close the gaps in students’ educations, without sacrificing new material.
Xavier discarded its old science textbooks in favor a custom- designed workbook that includes sample problems, daily homework assignments and reviews of fundamental math concepts and even vocabulary. If solving a science problem requires advanced algebra, the workbook includes a quick math review. The book also goes over some of the advanced vocabulary that students encounter in their science classes.
The school also inverted the traditional higher education model by asking top professors to focus on freshmen and sophomores, rather than graduate students or academic research. In addition, the school established an extensive tutoring program and set up writing classes to help students with scientific presentations.
Students are frequently quizzed on their work. During the freshman year, they are required to meet weekly with their advisers who closely monitor their academic progress. If they miss too many classes, students -- or their parents -- can expect a phone call.
"Rather than try to flunk students out, we really try to help them out," said J.W. Carmichael, the school’s premed adviser and the driving force behind Xavier’s rigid approach to teaching science.
Students also are told early on about what it takes to get into medical and graduate school. Each summer, a letter is sent to the students’ homes with a matrix matching their grade point average against those of students who go on to post-graduate and professional education. They also are tutored on test-taking skills.
Xavier’s approach, which becomes less rigid in the junior and senior years, has been an unabashed success. Within several years of implementing its new program the university vaulted to No. 2 in the nation behind much larger Howard in producing medical students. By 1993, Xavier moved to No. 1. The medical school acceptance rate of its students who apply is 70 percent, nearly twice the national average. And once in medical school, about 95 percent of Xavier’s graduates become doctors.
In addition to producing many African American medical students, Xavier produces the most black physics, chemistry and biology graduates in the country. The school also produces about a quarter of the nation’s black pharmacists.
"I think the curriculum here is the biggest reason for Xavier’s track record," said Lynch, a Clinton, Md., resident who plans to attend George Washington University School of Medicine. "They always are giving you pointers, and the place is small enough that people not only know your name, but they know you as an individual. It was also good to go to a school where the activities are geared toward you."
Gregory Lacy, a graduate of the New Orleans public schools, turned down a full scholarship to Louisiana State University to attend Xavier, where he was forced to take out loans to pay his room and board. It is a decision he does not regret.
"In high school, I was very impressionable. I know I could have gone either way," said Lynch, who is headed to medical school at Tulane in the fall. "But I was directed from the day I got here. I constantly had someone looking over my shoulder, and that helped. To me the entire benefit was the structure of the premed program."
The success of Xavier’s approach has earned the school a $12 million National Science Foundation grant aimed at creating a model for improving science, math and engineering education for underrepresented minorities.
"Certainly other schools should learn from Xavier’s example and attempt to emulate it," said Reginald Wilson, senior scholar at the American Council on Education. "But the approach of most college faculty is that students are either prepared to learn or not. It is a sink-or-swim mentality."
© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company