These, of course, include careers in the biosciences. The efforts continue with summer internships for minority college students, scholarship programs with several universities, and support of minority scientific organizations. Wiley expressed excitement over one decade-long partnership with the chemistry department at Howard University. Howard, he said, produces about 25 percent of black Ph.D. chemistry graduates in the United States. Most of this money goes to fund scholarships.
Funds also go to support research and laboratory equipment.
The program helped Howard University students, and it helped Monsanto. We've hired a number of highly qualified Ph.D. chemists who went through this program. Wiley believes that diversity recruitment programs designed to pipeline new scientists and engineers into a company will become increasingly important in the years ahead, as competition to recruit minority and female candidates intensifies. Recent declines in first-year graduate enrollment of African American and Hispanic science students could make recruitment of underrepresented minority scientists more difficult. Continued strong economic growth is another factor that may sharpen competition for new employees, he noted.