This research project is a follow-up to previous research on the persistence of high ability minority youth in college programs for mathematics, science, engineering, premedicine and predentistry. The earlier research used data retrieved from the 1985 College Board files for 5,602 students with SAT mathematical scores of 550 or above. All were minority students except for a comparison sample of 404 White students. In 1987, a first follow-up was conducted. 61 percent of the non-Asian American minority students had enrolled in college and were majoring in MSE fields in comparison with 55 percent of the White students and 70 percent for the Asian American students. In the current phase of this research, the original sample will be resurveyed, five years after high school graduation. A subsample will be interviewed in-depth. The major goal of this phase will be to answer three critical questions: which sample members are still studying or employed in MSE fields, what are their unique characteristics, and what are the theoretical and national policy implications of the results. This project is jointly supported by the Studies and Analysis and the Research in Teaching and Learning Programs.
WGBH Boston and its NOVA production group will produce a series of eight one hour television programs titled "Life: Cracking the Code". The series will cover recent advances in molecular biology, the record of personal quest and achievement of many of the biologists who have contributed to these advances, the social costs and benefits that have resulted and the ethical questions that new knowledge and new abilities in biology have generated. Individual programs will include "The Language of Life" on the discovery of DNA's role in molecular biology, "Molecular Machines" on proteins; "Designing the World to Order" on practical consequences of the new biology, "When Cells Rebel" on the processes involved in cancer, and "Between Self and Other" on the immune function. The series will be produced for prime time PBS evening broadcast to an audience of more than twelve million individuals by a co- production by the NOVA science unit at WGBH and the Chedd-Angier Production Company. Scientific advice and consulting will be provided by Harvard's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and a project advisory committee composed of seven distinguished scholars chaired by Prof. David Baltimore. The series production budget will be approximately $ 4.2 million. This new science series on DNA, molecular biology and its new technologies will cover one of the great intellectual achievements of our time. It will provide timely information about an area of scientific discovery that is rapidly transforming many aspects of our life. The series will, in addition, document the rich recent history of molecular biology with the participation of many of the original researchers who are still alive and active in their fields.