"We're doing a lot of things [now] in the Atlanta community and the science community to have the Georgia Tech name mean science as much as engineering," Smith says.

Nevertheless, with Georgia Tech now adhering to a race-blind admissions policy, it is unclear what impact this will have on Smith's efforts.

One recruitment program that has, in recent years, begun to help Smith's school -- and primarily benefits the engineering school -- is called FOCUS. Founded in 1992, the program's mission is to demystify the concept of graduate education among under-represented science and engineering undergraduates and provide them with a road map for how to pursue a Ph.D. in these fields. Roughly 180 undergraduates from around the country participate in the three-day program annually, and a good share of them -- roughly 10 percent wind up enrolling at Georgia Tech.

FOCUS is paid for, in part, by a grant from the Arthur P. Sloan Foundation.

"This program has increased visibility of graduate education among Black undergraduates, and has changed their mindset," says program director Robert Haley.

The Might of MIT

The weather in Cambridge, Mass. can be bitter cold in winter. So can the intellectual and social climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to two graduate students.

"When I first came here, I was overwhelmed with grief," recalls Tina Savage, a second-year graduate student who is pursuing her master's degree in mechanical engineering. She also is co-chair of the MIT Black graduate student association. "I can remember saying this could never be home. But then, I had to re-evaluate who I was and what I was trying to accomplish."

Once she did that, Savage began to find other people on campus who felt the same way she did and with whom she could identify.

"One reason why I decided to chair the educational support committee was to try to find other [Black students] to come here," says JoRuetta Roberson, a first-year, master's degree candidate in MIT's mechanical engineering program. "People are scared of the name MIT. You can deal with it, but you have to have a strong mind."