MR. HANCOCK: I want to see if the PhD I earned at Ohio State taught me anything. I am going to synthesize what I have been hearing today and try to relate it to the points I wanted to make, but I might scrap the talk and relate to what I have heard here today, and what we have been doing at Ohio State University. So, I hope you will bear with me.

Stephen just talked -- at least mentioned, anyhow, flying an elephant. I want to talk about a robin and a chicken.

We are doing a study at Ohio State University of our PhD programs, not specifically the research methodology pieces, but the doctorate, as a part of the Carnegie project, and you have heard that mentioned a couple of times this morning already.

Margaret is involved with that, Joe is involved with that, Robert is involved with that, Phil from Indiana University is involved with that project, and there may be some other people in the room.

One of the things we are trying to do is to identify salient points about -- it would help me if you smiled at me every now and then, because we are so serious about the subjects that we are talking about, and I am happy to be serious about them, but I also think we have to have levity. That is why I want to talk about chickens and robins.

Back in the 1970s, there were some researchers doing research on prototypical models. The idea of having a prototypical model of something means that when you characterize that concept, whatever it is that you are talking about has most of the features of that particular concept.

For example, a robin is a bird. A robin lays eggs, builds nests, has feathers, can fly, all of those good things.

A chicken, on the other hand, has some of the features of the prototypical bird model -- I mean, it lays eggs and it has feathers -- but most chickens don't fly unless you run after them and try to do something to them, as I did as a kid. That is a place where you could have smiled at me. You don't want to smile at me today, do you.

I am nervous, because I am going to go away from my prepared text. Margaret talked about the fact that she has got a small PhD program at Ohio State. We have a big PhD program.

We have 134 faculty members. We have got, at least in 1999, we had 209 PhD students, in 2001, 259, in 2002 we had 292, and this year we have got 241 PhD students. So, it is a huge program across a lot of different disciplines.

The assumption we make, of course, is that there is a common-ness to all of our PhD programs, although there are specializations within the PhD program.

The icon in the middle there is the Carnegie icon. I put that on. Lee Shulman is probably going to talk about that this afternoon in his presentation.

I wanted you to know that much of what we are doing in our own self study of our PhD programs has been speared by involvement with people like Joe and Margaret and Phil and Robert, as a part of the Carnegie project.

So, what do chickens and robins have to do with research methodology and the things that we are talking about today?

We did a self study and we identified 13 features that we think characterize ideal PhD programs. As we applied all 13 criteria to our program at Ohio State University, we felt that we were more like chickens than robins.

We have done our own studies, our own self studies, and one of the things we have noticed is that our students -- this is part of our self study. We had 65 students who participated in this self study.

Two thirds of the students said to us that the transition from wherever they were, when they came into the PhD program, was a pretty smooth transition, or somewhat smooth, and a third of our respondents said they had difficulty with the transition.

These tended to be the international students, and they tended to be some of our minority students. When I mention minority students here, I am talking about domestic American students who happen to be African American, who happen to be Latino or Latina, who happen to be Native American.

So, the two things that I want to talk about for the next few minutes, anyhow, is recruitment of these students into our PhD programs and, secondly, retention of those students in our programs.

So, the point that I was making there is that we want to focus on getting more students from African American, Latino and Native American populations into our PhD programs.

We are in Ohio. We don't have the attraction of the southwest or Florida or New York City. So, what do we do to get people to come out to the midwest to Ohio, who happen to be Latina, to study in a PhD program with us. That is a hard sell for us.

It is an important value that we hold, that we want to, first of all, represent minority students in our PhD programs across the board.

When we look at the education research focus of our PhD programs, there are very, very few African American, Latino or Native American students in those programs.

As we talk on a national level here about educational research and where we are going with educational research, I want to make sure -- and that is part of my job here today, and I think that is why Margaret had me become a part of this, and Joe also, as part of the core team, we wanted to make sure that we were serving a diverse student body in our PhD programs.

So, as I looked at that serving an increasingly diverse talent pool in PhD programs, there are some tacit assumptions there.

First of all, that we are going to serve the students once they get to our programs.

Second of all, that there is a need to increase the number of students from diverse backgrounds in our PhD programs and, third of all, that there is a talent pool that we are not touching.

I am not talking about whether they are in public schools or in private business somewhere, but there is a rich pool that we are not serving.

So, part of what we are trying to do at Ohio State University is to take on some ownership of that problem, and not simply to continue with whoever applies and has the GRE and GPA and writes a good personal statement to get into our PhD program.

In fact, we need to make sure that we have a concerted effort to increase the number of students from these underrepresented groups.

Margaret, I brought back a paper that you gave us in California this summer. We were at a session. Margaret said that one of the objectives at her program at the University of Colorado at Boulder is to increase program size, and the recruitment process, especially among underrepresented groups.

So, when we have fora like this, and when we have sessions at the AERA and other national meetings, I am always surprised by the number of African Americans in the room.

I took a little poll, and I think there are five black women and two black men in the room today. So, this might be an example of what might be happening when we are back in our institutions, or it might be an example of the larger issue, that we need to increase the number of Native Americans, Latino and Latina, as well as African Americans in these kinds of fora.

The realities are that, when I see -- and I am going to go back to the question I asked earlier this morning of Larry and Felice, that it seems to me, when I see large urban school districts and children in those urban districts not being able to demonstrate their achievement through standardized tests, and when I see no child left behind coming down the pike and not changing, we have got two areas of specialization, reading and mathematics.

The no child left behind is having a real impact on public schools, especially ones that I have worked in, such as the Baltimore City public schools, or in our own area, the Columbus public schools.

Those children have very good skills. They are just not the skills that are being tested in these two academic areas.

So, what are we, as educational researchers, going to do about that? Are we going to look the other way and simply say, there is a problem and somebody ought to be studying it, researching it and doing something about it, or are we going to take on some of the ownership of that.

My message here today is to be sure that I leave you not thinking that Ohio State is chicken, but that Ohio State is, in fact, trying to own up to its part of the responsibility.

We are a land grant institution with 42,000 students across all three levels -- undergraduate, master's and PhD. So, we have a major responsibility to educate people in the state of Ohio.

I want to spend the last few minutes of my time talking about international students. As we talk about what we are going to do with educational research, we need to keep in mind that a large percentage of our students come from other countries.

In our case, at Ohio State University, many of them come from Korea, many of them come from Turkey, many of them come from China or Taiwan.

So, when somebody gets a PhD with us, and they go back to Taiwan, what impact does the PhD that they have with us, especially the research methodologies and the educational research, what impact does that have on what they do when they go back to their countries.

It is a question that I am not sure that we have easy answers to it. It certainly is one when students in large numbers at Ohio State -- we have maybe as high as 40 percent, 33 percent of our students who are in our PhD programs are from other countries.

If we don't plan carefully, that could continue to increase. So, the slots that we have for domestic American students who want to go back into domestic American settings may be very different, and the kinds of jobs that they will be doing, than the students who go back to Taiwan or Korea or Turkey.

I am mentioning that as a recruitment issue. So, when we talk about going after students who can pay, and we get maybe 10 students being paid by the Turkish government to come to American universities to study, what does that mean for domestic American students slots in getting into those programs.

Once they get into those programs, what does that mean about the success rate that they have in those programs. So, the retention piece and the recruitment piece are clearly linked.

I hope I am not embarrassing my friend, Margaret, who had me invited here today, but I do want to make sure that, if we have any time to discuss these kinds of issues, that they will not be pushed under the rug, or they will not be soft pedaled, or whatever the word is, but that, in fact, we will own up to some of those kinds of things. I think I will give up the rest of my time here.

Oh, my favorite African proverb, from Zambia is, start where you are, but don't stay there.

So, what we have done, in identifying ourselves as chickens in our PhD program, in the prototype concept, we are not going to stay there.

So, the next time I start there, we will have some more things to say. I hope in a year or so we will have even some more significant things to say to you about what we are doing for increasing and supporting domestic American minority students, as well as international students. Thank you.

[Applause.]