Over the course of the past few years, a stepped-up GSAS recruiting effort has expanded the range of the admissions office--as an example, in 1987-'88 GSAS recruiters visited nearly 50 colleges around the country to meet with prospective applicants, whereas the previous year they visited only 12 colleges.

The lynchpin of the GSAS recruitment drive, according to Blackman, is personal contact. Assisted by between 30 and 40 minority graduate students, Blackman travels to colleges around the country and holds both group meetings and individual sessions with prospective minority applicants. She says that sending students out on recruiting trips has been effective because they can address their peers' fears about academia as a viable career option.

"We have found that on-site visits [by current minority students] are effective because Harvard has a reputation as a really presitigious institution, and [many of the prospective students] in their own minds just didn't think that they stood a chance of getting in," Blackman says. "Our recruiters are visible proof that they can."

To locate potential graduate students, Harvard subscribes to the National Name Exchange, a consortium of 27 colleges that exchange names of minority students each year, and the Minority Locator Service, which is a listing of minorities who have taken the appropriate graduate school admissions tests.

Once GSAS recruiters have identified the pool of prospective applicants, they move into the personal contact phase, calling students to sustain their interest in applying and "acting as advocates" for those minority students who do apply, says Blackman.

Each application from a minority student-for GSAS purposes, Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans are counted as minorities--is then reviewed by Blackman and her assistants before it is sent on to the departments who ultimately make the admissions decisions.

According to a review of the minority recruitment activities for 1987-'88, the reason for a centralized review of minority applications is that "it has been established that minorities sometimes submit ill-prepared applications which hinder their admission...Fine tuning of their application was suggested when appropriate."

"We do things like suggest they get their application typed, that kind of thing," Blackman says. These preventive measures, she says, make it more likely that minority applicants will receive equal consideration from the departments.

Once the admissions decisions are made, Harvard continues to pursue minorities, paying for them to fly to campuses and visit classes. Any minority student accepted by the graduate school automatically becomes eligible for a minority student fellowship, which pays for all tuition and living expenses.

But, despite the plethora of recruiting programs, many minority students and faculty members, who have led the fight for revamping Harvard's minority recruitment efforts--both at the graduate school level and among the ranks of the faculty--remain skeptical.

Remaining Skeptical

The MSA report released last spring attacked the administration for complacency and indifference in the area of minority hiring, noting that searches rarely turned up minority candidates. It called on the University to formulate a centralized plan for handling the problem.

The theory behind such a plan is that until the University hires minority professors, minority students will lack the role models that could convince them to make a career in academia.

"Most of us take our signals from role models and in academia right now, role models are few and far between," says David L. Evans, a senior admissions officer at the College. "One does not easily go into the unknown, especially an academic career."

Evans likes to tell the story that a few years ago his office looked over the application forms of minority students listed "academia" as a profession they would like to enter.