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A native of Chicago and a top high school basketball prospect, Bivens played at Iowa State and tried his hand at semi-professional basketball before deciding that big-time sports are a “meat market” where “coaches and teams have little regard for the players as people.”

With the encouragement of some faculty members, he enrolled in a master’s degree program in educational leadership and policy studies. Still, he was unsure if the academic life suited him, and he lacked confidence in his ability as a public speaker.

J. Herman Blake, director of African American Studies, hired him as his assistant and instructed him to spend the first month shadowing him. (Learn more...)

“He told me to watch everything he did,” recalled Bivens. “He told me to focus on his teaching style and how he communicated with others.”

One day Blake’s secretary told Bivens that Blake would not be coming to class and that he should take over. It was a terrifying experience – but one that he later came to appreciate. “It was like a gorilla was on my shoulder, and after it was over it stepped off,” said Bivens. Blake’s confidence in him changed the way he thought of his academics. “I began to see practical applications of the theories I learned in the classroom,” he says. “It gave me confidence to speak in front of small and large groups.”

As the African American Studies Program grew, Bivens was asked to lay the groundwork for the male support group that was to become the Band of Brothers. His goal was to stress academic excellence in a “down to earth” manner. “I wanted to get young guys in a room with African-American professors and administrators,” he notes, adding that he realized the power of the real experiences and struggles of those who had been successful.

“These students wanted to hear stories that made them think: ‘Wow, that sounds like me.’ ” As one who could talk about his own experiences caring for his younger sister while his mother worked, Bivens was in a good position to help the young men of the Band of Brothers raise their personal expectations and excel. As he puts it, the group’s mentoring initiatives “reinforce the fact that minority students are just as intelligent as the majority.”

Bivens earned his graduate degree in late 2003 and left Iowa State to take a job as a counselor-adviser at Metropolitan College in New York City. During his last few weeks at Iowa State, he discussed his role in the formation of the Band of Brothers and the work that continues on the campus at Ames, Iowa.

Bivens said the Band of Brothers program addresses the negative self-perceptions that many black men bring to campus and provides the tools that many of them lack, such as study and networking skills. “We tell them to stand up straight, to say their names with confidence and to have pride in their work,” said Bivens.

He recalled one young man who had been the valedictorian of his high school class, but could barely maintain a GPA of 2.5 at Iowa State. “He told me that his confidence level dropped immediately when he walked into classrooms of 100-plus white students who did not look like him,” said Bivens. “He made assumptions that hindered his attitude and performance.”

In the program, such students are encouraged to get involved with study groups and to ask questions in class, even when they feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. Bivens understands the challenges facing first-generation college students. “As much as your parents may want you to make it, they can’t answer your questions,” he said. “You have to ask very personal questions of strangers.”

Likewise, he can empathize with student athletes even as he urges them not to place their hope in a sports career at the expense of their academic lives. “If you grow up in the ghetto and watch your mother struggle all your life, and someone comes along to offer you a contract that will allow her to never work again, you’ll take it,” he says. For such reasons, he added, “athletes are the hardest group to reach.”

This story and other profiles of student success appear in the spring issue of Lumina Foundation Focus The publication, entitiled "Refuse to lose" aims to deepen our understanding of the many factors that affect student success. More...  

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Solutions to the math/science barrier

High dropout rates have been a constant concern in some academic fields, most notably in science, engineering and math (SEM).

“I’m concerned about the country’s engineering workforce,” said William A. Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering. “Numerically it’s down, and it’s increasingly composed of non-native-born individuals.”

UMBC President
Freeman Hrabowski III

Roughly half of the students who start out pursuing an engineering degree do not complete it, Wulf pointed out, citing that fact as a major factor in the shortage of U.S.-born engineers. “Engineering faculty members would like to think that they are flunking out the poor students,” he said. Yet many students who transfer out of SEM do well in other disciplines, so the blame for high attrition rates
can’t all be laid on students.

The University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) has embraced the challenge of raising persistence and graduation rates among SEM students by offering tutorial centers, peer counseling, group study and other support services.

University President Freeman Hrabowski III, an African-American mathematician with a doctorate from the University of Illinois, is particularly concerned about encouraging students of color in these rigorous academic disciplines. He points to the university’s Meyerhoff Scholarship Program as a keystone in that effort.

Each year, the nationally noted program chooses 50 first-year students, most of them African-Americans, from among 1,500 applicants who plan to eventually earn Ph.D.s or M.D./Ph.D.s. The Meyerhoff Scholars receive financial support and begin their undergraduate studies with a six-week college-prep boot camp that includes coursework and meetings with leaders in science and technology. During the next four years, students receive regular academic counseling; form study groups; take part in community service, internships and undergraduate research; and receive help from working professionals in planning their graduate study and future careers.

Compared to students who had qualified for the program but gone elsewhere, Meyerhoff Scholars have been twice as likely to graduate with an SEM degree and more than five times as likely to attend graduate school in these fields.

Hrabowski cites two keys to helping students succeed in the sciences: setting high expectations and emphasizing the importance of a strong work ethic. “In the humanities and social sciences, you can slack off for a while and still survive if you can think and write well,” he said. “But work in the sciences and mathematics is cumulative. If you get behind, it’s tough to catch up.”