Kentebe Ogbolu ’06 thinks of his favorite movie, the Mod Squad, and remembers a lesson: keep in mind that whenever you climb over a wall, someone helped you and as soon as you’re over, you should reach your hand back and help someone else over that same wall.

When Ogbolu found out about a conference Fairfield University offers to minority students who are interested in the sciences, he encouraged other minorities to join him at the conference.

“I told as many science majors as I could,” Ogbolu said. “I tried to get them to take time out of their busy schedules to get out to the conference.”

Every year the College of Arts and Sciences sponsors a trip to the New England Board of Education Science Network (NEBHE). Located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass, it is an all-day event designed to address the needs of minority students who are underrepresented in the sciences.

Ogbolu was one of the students present at the NEBHE last year.

“My day networking at NEBHE was very beneficial for me as a person and for connections in my major,” Ogbolu said. “During the Internship Session I was able to connect with Raytheon, IBM, and the National Institutes of Health [among others].”

One of the goals of the conference, held this year in November, is to allow minority students to network within their science field.

According to Benedetta Maguire, operations assistant in the Dean’s office, the Dean of the College of Arts and Science funds the overnight trip. Dean Timothy Snyder recommends the event for all minority students.

“We strongly encourage our students, as does the Office of Multicultural Relations, to go,” Snyder said. “Last year we had a good presence there.”

Six of the 25 current minority science majors attended NEBHE last year and between eight and 10 are expected to attend this year. According to the Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Health Workforce, while African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans make up 25 percent of the U.S. population, the groups represent only nine percent of the nation’s nurses and six percent of the nation’s doctors.

Fairfield is making a conscious effort to encourage minorities to enter majors such as biology and nursing, which may lead to a career in the health professions, but despite the efforts, numbers are still low.

Theresa Quell, assistant dean of Fairfield University’s school of nursing expressed the difficulty of drawing minorities into health professions.

“It’s hard,” Quell said. “Fairfield as a whole doesn’t have as a diverse population as other university’s might.”

Students and representatives from the school of nursing go out into the community as an outreach to inner-city schools and promote nursing as a major and profession.

“People know there is a nursing program [at Fairfield University] because people go out to the community,” Quell said. “We make efforts even at the middle mchool level to convince men and minorities to come here.”

Efforts are being made, though. Keith Bradley, advisor of health professions at Fairfield, expressed the need for more diversity in the health professions.

“I have given talks about health professional careers in general and HP3 at Fairfield in particular to high schools in Connecticut and New York,” Bradley said. “Many of the students at these presentations included minorities.”

“Hopefully, many will choose Fairfield as the best fit for their undergraduate work,” Bradley said.

According to the University Fact Book and the Office of Management Information, almost five percent of biology majors in the graduating class of 2003 were minorities, less than one percent of nursing majors were minorities, and little over three percent of all minority students majored in either biology or nursing.

These statistics are up compared to the previous graduating class of ’02, in which less than one percent of biology majors were minorities, almost two percent of nursing were minorities and a little over one percent of all minority students majored in either biology or nursing.

Yet, as The Mirror reported a few weeks ago, this year’s freshman class doesn’t boast diversity. According to The Mirror, although the class size has grown 24 percent from the class of 2007 to the class of 2008, the number of African-American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American (AHANA) students has fallen 20 percent. The class of 2008 will have seven fewer Asians, 10 fewer Hispanics and a total of only eight African-American members. Until Fairfield’s sciences receive diversity, the university will continue with its efforts to encourage students to enter the sciences, and students and faculty alike hope minorities will take advantage of what Fairfield has to offer.

“I hope that such an opportunity will be offered to students from my college,” Ogbolu said, “or any college in the New England area.”

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