The first crop of the Leadership Alliance’s Irene Diamond fellows have earned, or are about to earn, their doctorate degrees and are advancing to professional research positions. Since 1996, the Alliance has awarded Diamond Foundation grants to first-year and dissertation-phase graduate students.

“Since its inception, the Alliance has been dedicated to the goal of helping students from underrepresented groups find their way into and through the academic pipeline and on to valuable research careers,” said Dr. Jim Wyche, the Alliance’s executive director. “Although we initially focused exclusively on students interested in the life and physical sciences, we expanded our mission to include the humanities and social sciences. Therefore, we decided to use the majority of the funds generously donated by the Irene Diamond Foundation to support aspiring Ph.D. candidates in those areas.

“We are so pleased to see the first of these students succeed. They have completed rigorous programs, achieved their goals and are on their way to successful careers in academia, government and industry. They are the evidence that brings the importance of our mission into focus.”

According to statistics from the National Research Council, it takes an average of six to seven years of graduate studies to get a doctorate—no matter what your discipline or ethnicity. The Alliance awarded its first Irene Diamond graduate fellowships for first-year students in 1996.

Today, approximately 39 percent of the Irene Diamond awardees have received or are about to receive their doctorates. Of these recipients, 10 have received doctorates and 90 percent have taken assistant professorships at some of the most respected institutions in the country, including Stanford, Jackson State and Pace Universities, Occidental College and the Universities of Notre Dame, Washington, Kansas and Delaware.

“The Alliance applauds the efforts of the first groups of our alumni who are making it through the graduate studies pipeline,” said Dr. Wyche. “We are very proud of them.”