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2/26/1998 12:10:00 AM Tapia Accepts AAAS Award, Participates in Panel at Meeting On Feb. 16, Rice Professor Richard Tapia accepted the 1997 Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at its 150th anniversary meeting in Philadelphia. The award was presented by Mildred Dresselhaus, president of AAAS and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This annual award honors individuals who, during their careers, demonstrate extraordinary leadership to increase the participation in science and engineering fields and careers of underrepresented groups, including women of all racial and ethnic groups; African-American, American Indian and Hispanic men; and people with disabilities. Tapia, the Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics, is a national leader in education and outreach programs and he is internationally known for his research in the computational and mathematical sciences. He is also associate director of graduate studies and director of education and outreach programs for the Center for Research on Parallel Computation at Rice. He has been a member of the Rice faculty since 1970. Tapia directs the Spend a Summer with a Scientist program sponsored by the Rice Center for Research on Parallel Computation and the Mathematical and Computational Science Awareness Workshops. He has mentored both undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented groups in the mathematical sciences. The Rice computational and applied mathematics department has become a leader in producing female and underrepresented minority Ph.D. graduates. The Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement was established in 1991 and includes a $5,000 award. In 1996, Tapia was appointed by President Clinton to the National Science Board, received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, and was named Engineer of the Year by Hispanic Engineer Magazine. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering. While at the AAAS meeting, Tapia participated in a panel session titled "Meeting America's Needs for the Scientific and Technological Challenges of the 21st Century." The panel, which was part of the President's Initiative on Race, was co-sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs of the AAAS. The session focused on the need to diversify the science and technology community and how to deal with the challenges to targeted minority recruitment programs in science and engineering. In his comments on the panel on the need to diversify, Tapia said, "No first-world nation can maintain its economic health when such a large part of its population is outside mainstream activity, including all technological, scientific and computational activity." In regard to the challenges of recruitment, he called for an evaluation of
the criteria used to evaluate prospective students, its use and its implementation.
"The misuse of the standardized test at selective and even not-so-selective
institutions is the underrepresented minority's worst enemy," Tapia said.
"My considered opinion is that this misuse is depriving the nation from
tapping into a large part of its natural resources in terms of creativity and
leadership." |
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