She then spent four years as a physics professor at Rutgers University before becoming chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1995. Accordingly, Ms. Jackson says, one of her main goals as president will be to create new partnerships with industry. Apart from a desire to support innovative teaching methods and raise the university's endowment, Ms. Jackson is reluctant to talk very much about what else she will do as president, preferring to wait, she says, until she knows more about what the job will require. In 1996, women earned 21 per cent of doctorates in physics, computer science, and other physical sciences, while black students garnered only 2 per cent of the doctorates in those subjects, according to the National Research Council. Only 4 per cent of Rensselaer's students this year are African American, and between 3 and 4 per cent are Hispanic.
Women make up about a quarter of the institute's students.
Ms. Jackson believes that more women and black students want careers in science than ever before, and that, as the president of a polytechnic university, she will be well situated to help them realize their goals. Again, she declines to explain specifically how she will attack the problem, but she says Rensselaer might, among other things, work more closely with high schools to raise the level of science education. She points to her work at the regulatory commission, where she is credited with improving federal oversight of the nuclear industry, as proof that she is an effective leader. Faculty leaders are confident she can do the job. They viewed her predecessor, R. Byron Pipes, as an authoritarian who paid too little attention to scholarship and raised too little money.