NATIONAL ASSETS
Darin Bell is an example of why the Goldwater Scholars Program is succeeding in its mission to create a national asset of scientists.
Written by Sally Logue Post
Gary Bell delights in seeing Texas Tech University students do well in nationally competitive scholarships. But when his own son, Darin, was in the running for the Goldwater Scholarship, the dean of the Texas Tech Honor’s College, was more than a little stressed.
“The family was really nervous. I remember we were afraid that he did not stand much of a chance. I guess you always underrate your own kids. But we were extraordinarily pleased when the announcement came that Darin had won the scholarship,” says Bell, who holds a doctorate in history.
As for Darin, he wasn’t too sure of his chance to win the prestigious scholarship when he was a Texas Tech biology major in 1997. “Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect going into the competition. Texas Tech was just at the beginning of producing competitive students,” he explains.
The Goldwater Scholarship is named for the late U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. The scholarships are awarded annually to sophomore or junior students who are majoring in science, mathematics and engineering and who intend to go on toward a graduate education.
Since its inception in 1986, the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation has awarded 3,962 scholarships. The scholarship carries up to a $7,500 cash award per academic year for up to two years to be used for tuition, books, fees and room and board.
Competition to become a Goldwater Scholar is stiff and getting more so every year, says Gary Bell. Texas Tech students have fared well in the merit-based competition. Since 1994, the first year that Texas Tech produced a Goldwater Scholar, 21 Red Raider students have become Goldwater Scholars and three have received honorable mentions.
Texas Tech shows great numbers, when one considers that each university can submit only four names, and Texas Tech, which often has 10 or 12 students apply for the scholarship, competes in one of the toughest regions in the country. “Contestants compete on a state-by-state basis. If you look across Texas, the state receives 15 or 16 scholarships each year, and Texas Tech does very well. We’ve gotten anywhere from one scholar to four. We had no winner and only one honorable mention in 2003, the first year since 1994 that Texas Tech has had no Goldwater Scholarship winners,” Bell notes.
Gerald J. Smith, president of the Goldwater Foundation, agrees that the competition is more stringent than ever before. “Schools in Texas do very well. It’s one of the toughest states in which to succeed in the competition. A lot of schools do not receive any scholars at all,” he says.
Not only do Texas students face tough competition, but nationally, the course to obtaining a Goldwater Scholarship is intense as a trend. “The students we get are just the cream of the crop, and they’re just getting better every year,” says Smith. “The vast majority of our nominees have 4.0 grade-point-averages, stellar academic backgrounds and solid research credentials. It’s difficult to choose who should become a Goldwater Scholar.”
For 2003, the Goldwater Foundation named 300 students as Scholars, out of 1,093 applications. An indication of the quality of the Goldwater Scholars is the number of other internationally competitive graduate fellowships those students win. Smith says six of the 32 Rhodes Scholarships and eight of the 40 Marshall Scholarships awarded in 2003 in the United States went to Goldwater Scholars. The Rhodes Scholarship, which provides for two to three yeas of study at Oxford University in England, and the Marshall Scholarship, which provides for two to three years of study at Oxford or another university in England, are awarded to students who are near to being within a year of graduation or have just graduated from college.
The increased competition for the Goldwater, and other scholarships, led Bell to create the position of Scholarship Coordinator in the Honor’s College and to hire William Bukowski, Ph.D., about three years ago. “Bill works out of the Honor’s College, but he will help any student enrolled at Texas Tech with the application process for any competitive scholarship,” Bell said.
The application process for the Goldwater Scholarship is tough and time-consuming. Students are judged strictly on a written application. The process requires no interview. The application consists of basic information such as major, grade-point average, honors, awards, scholarships, activities and jobs held in school. Lengthier sections include past and present research activities associated with the student’s major and his or her professional aspirations. Another section asks students to describe an activity or experience that has been important in clarifying or in strengthening their motivation for a career in science, mathematics or engineering. Students also are asked to describe any characteristics or other personal information that demonstrates the diverse economic, ethnic and/or occupational background of the student and his or her family. Finally, students must write an essay on a significant issue or problem in the student’s field of study that is of particular interest to the student. Many of these essays are extremely technical in nature, Smith explains.
Bukowski’s job is to arrange meetings for the students with the Texas Tech nominating committee and to work with the students to edit and rewrite their essays. “So much of a good application is writing, rewriting, revising and throwing out what is not working,” says Bukowski, who has a doctorate in English from Texas Tech. “This is not the kind of process in which students can knock out the essays the night before they are due.”
All of that rewriting is vital to a student’s success because the essays have become even more important to the national selection committee in recent years. “Five years ago in providing feedback to students who were accepted, I would tell them the essay was just something else the reviewers look at,” says Smith. “Today that’s no longer true. The essay can be a make-or-break part of the application.”
Bukowski’s position is one that Darin Bell applauds. When he entered the competition, he received help from several people, but no one central place existed for help for students who were pursuing prestigious scholarships. “When I went through I was on my own. It’s a big application form, just loads of fun to fill out. The committee asks you to fill out everything about your life,” Darin Bell remarks. does the same kind of thing. I think the long history of working with undergraduates at Texas Tech helped us get the initial Howard Hughes grant.”
While a centralized person to help with applications is vital, both Darin and Gary Bell point to undergraduate research involvement as a key to winning the prize. “The Texas Tech University Howard Hughes Medical Institute program is vital to our success in the Goldwater competition,” Gary Bell says. “The Texas Tech Howard Hughes Medical Institute Program, with its emphasis on undergraduate research and putting students with faculty in their labs, has had a huge impact on making students qualified to be Goldwater recipients. These students need to be directly involved in research and not just have been bottle washers in a lab. A successful applicant has that experience and can write well about their role in the research and where they see that experience leading them in the future.”
Darin Bell was a Texas Tech Howard Hughes Fellow, but he began his undergraduate research career while in high school through the Texas Tech University Clark Scholars program, which allows high school students to participate in research with Texas Tech scientists and scholars.
“Being in that biology lab as an undergraduate gave me a good solid science background,” he remembers. “I would not have been terribly competitive without the undergraduate research component of my education.”
The Goldwater Scholarships were established to ensure that a pool of qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers exists in the United States. Smith, who worked for Goldwater after retiring from the U.S. Air Force, says Sen. Goldwater traveled annually to air shows in Paris and London. “Every year, we would return from those trips, and the Senator would fire off a heated letter to whomever the president was at the time about how the United States was falling behind the rest of the world in technology and research,” says Smith.
The foundation was created after Sen. Goldwater’s longtime insistence that the United States should pay more attention to the sciences, mathematics and engineering fields. Smith tells the story of a very late night and early morning on the U.S. Senate floor. Goldwater had long served on the Senate Armed Forces Committee. In 1986, Goldwater, a Republican, was preparing to retire from the Senate after 30 years. Sam Nunn, a Democratic senator from Georgia, was then ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee and was a longtime friend of Goldwater's.
Sen. Nunn wanted to do something to pay tribute to Goldwater and decided a foundation to focus on mathematics and science education would be just the honor.
“It was 2 a.m., and Sen. Nunn took the podium to present an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that was on the floor,” explains Smith. “He said the amendment would establish a foundation to recognize academic excellence in mathematics and science. When Barry heard that, he whispered to Nunn that he wanted to be put on as a co-sponsor, but Nunn ignored him. Barry then called over Nunn’s chief of staff and repeated his wish, but was again ignored. At that point Sen. Goldwater was plenty angry. About then, Sen. Nunn announced, to a standing ovation on the Senate floor, that the foundation created in his amendment would be named for Barry Goldwater. You could have knocked the senator over with a feather. He was so surprised and so moved by that moment.”
While the senator never played an active role in the foundation, his daughter Peggy Goldwater Clay, and son, Michael, both serve on the foundation’s board of directors.
“I think scholarships are so necessary today with the cost of higher education increasing,” says Clay, who serves as chairperson of the board this year. “I have had recipients of the scholarship tell me they could not have achieved their goals in life without this scholarship.”
Clay hopes that the foundation is helping to meet the need her father saw for more and better scientists, engineers and mathematicians in the United States. She also says she is personally fulfilled to see the good that the foundation is doing.
“I’m thrilled to be on the board,” she remarks. “When you read the applications and see what these young men and women have accomplished, some of the situations they have come from, and how they’ve done so much, it’s just overwhelming. I am always so touched when I meet Goldwater Scholars and they tell me their stories. I know my father heard some of those same type of ‘thank you’s’ before he died, and I know he was proud to have this foundation established for him and was proud of these students.”
For many universities, including Texas Tech, Goldwater Scholars are a prestigious bragging point. For the Bell family, Darin’s scholarship was the key to a place in medical school and a confirmation of the decision to attend Texas Tech. “I was quite pleased,” Darin remembers. “The opportunities to do undergraduate research at Texas Tech helped me win a Goldwater Scholarship and made me much more competitive to get into a top medical school.”
“Darin’s success confirmed the wisdom of sending him to Texas Tech,” says his father. “He had the scores to go anywhere, but there was a perception that the personal attention, the undergraduate research opportunities and some extraordinary personalities on campus made Texas Tech one of the best undergraduate experiences that Darin could have received anywhere in the country.”
For the Goldwater Foundation, Darin is an example of why the program is succeeding in its mission. “In the 15-year history of the foundation, we have created a national asset of nearly 4,000 unbelievably bright people who will benefit this nation in some way,” says Smith.
So far, almost two dozen of the people Smith describes as national assets are Red Raiders, and Gary Bell is certain many more Texas Tech students will become national and worldwide resources in the important work of the sciences, mathematics and engineering.
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