Two ORNL divisions are participating in a national program for workforce diversity that encourages some of the nation's most promising science and engineering students to continue in the field. Their participation provides a way for ORNL to attract cream-of-the-crop students in engineering schools to come to work at the Laboratory. The program is appropriately called GEM, for graduate education for minorities, and it has already resulted in the employment of two promising researchers in the Engineering Technology Division (ETD).
GEM's stated purpose is to increase annually the number of ethnic minority students who earn M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in science and engineering. The process of bringing the GEM fellows to ORNL has the drama of a professional sports draft: Getting the GEM fellows you want involves deciding on the students you want from a large pool of candidates, a lottery to determine your turn in the selection rounds, "drafting" the people you want, and "signing the contract," or having the student agree to come for a summer's employment. The last part is usually the easiest. According to Bill Craddick, who manages ETD's GEM Program, the summer internships represent an excellent opportunity for the students.
"The summer experience will be broadening and educational for them," he says. "We hope they become interested in working for us. We'll have an inside track in getting these top quality engineers as employees. Personnel people at other companies and labs say that GEM is easily their most successful program for attracting top quality minority people. With GEM, they have to make the grade, and you can hand pick them."
To be sure, GEM is not a "gimme" program. Qualifying as a GEM fellow is tough. The list of participating colleges and universities includes some of the most demanding schools in the nation. The applicant must demonstrate as an undergraduate an ability to pursue a master's degree successfully or as a graduate student the ability to pursue a Ph.D. degree as the case may be. GEM has programs for both M.S. and Ph.D. fellowships. Required are a high grade-point average and steady progress toward the degree. The students do summer internships of about 12 weeks and may return for up to three summer terms.
Participating industries and labs, such as ETD and RRD, pay $30,000 per year for the right to select two students who are about to receive their B.S. degrees. The money goes into a pool that pays for tuition, fees, and a living stipend for the GEM students. Applicants submit resumes, which are collected by GEM staff, who confirm and proofread them. (The consortium staff even recalculates GPAs from transcripts.) Then the judgment is made on whether the student qualifies.
According to Craddick, the lottery is an interesting part of the process. "We sit around tables and pick numbers that represent our drafting position. About 80 companies are represented, including almost every major technological firm or laboratory that you've ever heard of. There are two rounds. Once everyone has a number, the person with the lowest number announces which student he or she has selected. That student is now a GEM fellow who must agree to work at least one summer with the company that drafted them. There is no obligation to accept employment after they leave school, however."
RRD's Larry Proctor went to that division's first lottery with little expectation of getting its top two picks. He came back with both. But what if somebody grabs your number one pick? That's an experience that has happened to the New York Giants more than once. For the Lab, according to Craddick, it shouldn't be a problem. "We've prioritized a list of choices ahead of time. It's a good quality pool."
Students participating in the GEM program who worked at ORNL in the summer of 1995 pose with former GEM students (back row, from left) Johney Green and Nathan Wood, who are now researchers in the Engineering Technology Division. The students are (from left) Vicente Reynal, CharlesWinfrey, Carolyn Baker, Cicely Brown, and Sharon Rogers.
GEM fellows on the ETD and RRD payrolls for the summer of 1995 came from a variety of places and schools. Sharon Rogers, an RRD intern from Summitt, Mississippi, left a high-paying job to return to Duke University to pursue a master's degree. Her GEM companion in RRD is another Mississippi native, Charles Winfrey, who hails from the town of Sunflower. Charles will complete his senior year at Jackson State University this year.
ETD's interns include Vicente Reynal, from Humacao, Puerto Rico, a graduate of Georgia Tech who has been accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate program, and North Carolina A&T graduates Carolyn Baker, of Montclair, New Jersey, and Cicely Brown, of Suffolk, Virginia. The two women will both pursue master's degrees at the University of Illinois. Reynal spent much of his summer designing a plant layout for a silicon rubber manufacturing plant that will supply a critical raw material for an ORNL-developed technology.
According to the ETD researchers who landed jobs at ORNL after their GEM fellowships, the current fellows' experiences at ORNL should be rewarding, both to the students and the Lab.
"When I was an intern, other researchers helped see to it that I learned about several areas of ORNL," Nathan Wood says. "This was an important experience in a multidisciplinary laboratory."
Johney Green, hired after he received his master's degree from Georgia Tech, plans to work on a Ph.D. degree at Georgia Tech. "ORNL and Georgia Tech both have worked with me so that I can work toward my Ph.D. while working here," he says. "They have been very supportive."
ETD, which has participated in this program for 7 years, is happy with the results. "The division has found and hired people we are happy to have regardless of minority status," Craddick says. "This program promotes the positive image of our division. We've received calls and letters from students asking us to draft them because of recommendations from other GEM fellows."
In fact, another division has. After Craddick related the success of the GEM program at an ORNL diversity workshop, ORNL's Metals and Ceramics Division decided to participate in the program's Ph.D. science component.
The main benefit of the program, Craddick says, goes to the student. The GEM program has enabled ORNL to seek out the best while providing students who have desire and ability with the means to achieve their potential.
"When people are confronted with prejudice or other obstacles, they can
either use it as an excuse or be more determined to succeed," Craddick says.
"Being minorities, GEM fellows have faced prejudice, and often had to overcome
an economically disadvantaged background as well. But they've proven that they
will not let difficulties prevent them from succeeding. That's the kind of work
ethic and determination every employer wants to have in all its employees, and
it's especially valuable when you're trying to find people to conduct research
to find ways to overcome technological barriers." 
—Bill Cabage
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