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From Desegregation to Center of Excellence: From Desegregation to Center of Excellence: 30 Years of Marine Sciences at 30 Years of Marine Sciences at Savannah State University.Savannah State University.

•Since 1985 the program has conferred 152 BS degrees (50% earned by African Americans) and 32 MS degrees (18% by African Americans and 14% by black international students).

•Nineteen percent of bachelor’s degree graduates have gone on to pursue masters or doctoral degrees and 30% of the master’s degree graduates have entered doctoral programs.

•Of all Marine Science B.S. and M.S. recipients at SSU for whom we have data, approximately 80% have earned jobs working within the discipline in state and federal labs and agencies (DNR, USACE, NOAA), aquariums, K-12 science teaching or were admitted to graduate programs.

What’s the story?What’s the story?

•1979 BS Mar. Biol. approved two faculty, less than a dozen black and white students, converted greenhouse, 22-ft boat.

•2010 Center of Excellence with nearly 100 students enrolled in both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Marine Sciences, 8 faculty, 7 staff.

The program has formal collaborative agreements SkIO, NOAA Fisheries, Marine Biomedicine & Environmental Sciences Center MUSC, The Georgia Aquarium and has had 36 funded grant awards and contracts totaling $11.7 million.

.HBCUs are disproportionately more effective in training significant numbers of African American students in the sciences.

Although they enrolled only 11.1% of African-American undergraduates and 9.4% of African American graduate students in fall 2007, they awarded 33.3% of undergraduate and 24% of master’s degrees earned by African-Americans in Biological, biomedical and, physical sciences, and science technologies in 2006 and 2007.

Commitments to the development of geoscience programs at HBCUs and other minority serving institutions should be expanded to ensure demographic diversity among professionals in geoscience research, education and public literacy in the U.S.