When Dr. William H. Sanders joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more than 30 years ago, he found something problematic — there simply weren’t enough minorities or women represented in the federal agency.
Sanders, who is the director of the National Center for Environmental Research in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, says the agency is making a long-term commitment by seeking out more minorities to enroll in the EPA’s Greater Research Opportunities (GRO) Fellowship Program.
Sanders says that while the numbers of underrepresented groups have risen since the beginning of his career with the EPA in 1973, more needs to be done to recruit underrepresented groups into the fields of science and math.
“There are a lot more of the best and brightest out there,” Sanders says. However, “we never see enough.”
With its GRO program, the EPA hopes to help build capacity in universities that have limited resources for research and development by awarding fellowships to students in environmental fields in an effort to support some of the nation’s most promising undergraduate and graduate degree candidates in environmental studies.
By making more students aware of the GRO program’s existence and receiving more applications, the agency will have more opportunities to recruit “the cream of the crop,” Sanders says. Last year, more than 100 students applied for 29 highly selective fellowships.
Since its inception in 1995, the GRO program has awarded over 2,200 fellowships to students from every state, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The program provides financial support through its stipends and offers students up to $10,000 for tuition and fees. One of the perks of the program is a three-month paid summer internship at an EPA facility.
