INSIDE ON CAMPUS

Intellectual Entrepreneurship: Improving Education and Increasing Diversity

Ana Lucia Hurtado and her son Yianni

by Ana Lucia Hurtado
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared in the January/February 2007 issue of Change magazine. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

The lack of diversity in graduate programs is a national crisis. A May 2005 report by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation indicated that, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up 32 percent of all U.S. citizens in the normal age range of Ph.D. candidates, only 7 percent of all doctoral recipients are black or Latino.

One thing is evident: Traditional methods of recruiting minorities into graduate programs just aren’t working well enough. Universities often try to remedy this situation by tinkering with recruitment strategies. But this neglects a major cause of the problem: Undergraduates are not being given sufficient opportunities to explore graduate study in ways that resonate with their personal and intellectual interests and commitments.

Some argue that internships and career counseling meet this need. But these often come too late in the curriculum and are viewed by many students and professors as non-academic and secondary to scholarship and study. Maybe we need to start thinking outside the box. Why should education be limited to textbooks and lectures? Why must experiential learning and career exploration be viewed as less intellectual than academic knowledge?

As an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to connect my personal, intellectual and career interests. Through the University of Texas at Austin’s Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) initiative, I was given the chance to be a “citizen-scholar” – to own my education and discover how to leverage knowledge for social good.

In school, I studied hard and always pushed myself to be a top achiever, believing this would ultimately secure me a fulfilled life. However, near the end of high school, I grew nervous about finding the “right” career for me. I was torn between Rice University’s Rice-Baylor Scholarship and Duke University’s Robertson Scholarship. Ultimately, because of my inability to commit myself to a medical career, I chose Duke University, hoping it would give me the time I needed to keep exploring my career options.

While at Duke University, however, I retreated into a state of despair, believing I might never find my vocation. I continued with my pre-med track as was expected of me. I probably would have become a physician, too, had I not confronted the greatest challenge of my life: becoming a mother. Facing an unintended pregnancy, I felt I could no longer approach my future passively. Not only did my life depend on it, but also my son’s life.

After deciding to leave Duke since my son was living with my parents in Texas, I transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. There I stumbled upon an unusual career offering: the IE Pre-Graduate School Internship.

The program isn’t merely an “applied” or “work” experience. It also offers a space where students can reflect on their experiences, discovering how everything fits together with their unique personal commitments and intellectual ambitions.

The site of my internship was the Children’s Rights Clinic at the UT law school. For the first time, my “teachers” asked me what I wanted to learn, what I wanted to get out of the experience. For the first time I asked questions for which I genuinely sought answers, and I directed my own course of study.

In collaboration with two faculty supervisors and a graduate-student mentor, I was able to create the most enriching experience possible, crafting a schedule that would provide me with a balanced overview of family law.

Along the way, I learned that the IE program attracts a disproportionate number of first-generation college students and students from under-represented minority groups. Students with those backgrounds make up nearly half of IE interns.

The philosophy of the program shows promise as one approach to increasing the number of people of color who attend graduate school.

Based on my experience, I hope educational administrators will expand the opportunities, such as IE internships, for students to learn beyond classroom walls. The IE internship has enabled me to face the world, diploma in hand, with a sense of direction and purpose. With my son now a bit older, I plan to attend law school next year and am in the process of applying to several institutions, all of them in places where I would have a strong support system from family and friends.

My ultimate dream is to practice family law at a non-profit organization for a number of years and then become a clinical professor of law at a major law school, not unlike my supervising attorneys. This dream, of course, will not be deterred by my other, equally strong, desire to have more children and be a loving wife and mother.

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