At the 1993 annual conference of minority recipients of the Ford Foundation's Fellowship Fund for doctoral candidates and graduates, Dr. Bai Akridge asked this question of the participants: "If we've agreed that this program is so important to us, why aren't we doing something to help ourselves, too?"

Two years later, Akridge and other former fellows answered that question by establishing the Ford Fellows Fund to raise money to increase the number of doctoral fellowships the foundation awards to minorities each year. Since 1980, 1,323 minorities have received Ford Foundation Fellowships with the largest number, 42 percent, going to African Americans.

Akridge said, "We [former fellows] agreed that it's so important what [the Ford Foundation is] doing and that we should own part of it ourselves by giving money."

Akridge, a program director for international telecommunications policy at IBM in Washington, D.C., volunteers time, year round, as the chair of the Ford Fellows Fund. During the two years that it has been in existence, solicitations from former Ford Fellows, corporations, and matching funds from the Ford Foundation have resulted in enough money to fund two $18,000 awards to minorities at the dissertation stage of their doctoral studies.

The Ford Foundation's Dissertation Fellowship program is one of three awards set up specifically for Alaskan Natives, African Americans, Mexican Americans/Chicanos, Native American Indians, Native Pacific Islanders and Puerto Ricans. The other programs are Ford's Predoctoral and Postdoctoral awards. For three years, Predoctoral recipients, those just starting to work on their Ph.D., receive an annual stipend of $14,000 for living expenses and their tuition is waived. Postdoctoral fellows, recent Ph.D. recipients, are given a one year, $25,000 stipend and additional funds for travel and research on an approved topic.

These three programs were established in order to increase the number of minorities with Ph.D. credentials at higher education institutions in areas where they have historically been under-represented. Graduate students pursuing a Ph.D. in disciplines where minorities have earned a large number of doctorate degrees - such as education, social work, and medicine - are not eligible for the program. Although the Ford Foundation is not strict in its requirement that fellows teach when they complete the program, 90 percent do pursue teaching or research positions at universities and colleges.