Why AMIGA?

Across the U.S. higher education administrators and faculty are leading initiatives that focus on increasing faculty diversity. At the same time, undergraduate student populations are becoming increasingly diverse. Although graduate study is a significant part of the pipeline to becoming a faculty member, graduate education and admissions specifically, have received far less attention.

In 2020 social inequality and access to resources manifested nationally with the realization that people of color are more likely to catch COVID-19. Moreover, racial injustice exposed the extent that black and brown people experience policing and other forms of institutional racism. Students, staff and faculty alike have pondered, What can one do to foster social justice in academia?

Demographic forecasts detail a significantly changing U.S. population by 2050. In California, public colleges and universities are already enrolling substantial numbers of college students who are historically underrepresented in higher education. The Alliance for Multi-campus, Inclusive Graduate Admissions (AMIGA) project is focused on supporting holistic graduate admissions to build a faculty pipeline and increase access to graduate education.

To that end, the AMIGA project values equitable and inclusive holistic review methods for graduate admissions that potentially increases the number of students in graduate school who are first generation college, from underserved communities or are historically underrepresented. It is only with attention to equitable and inclusive methods that institutions can achieve their goals of increasing faculty diversity and preparing the brightest minds to tackle society’s most intractable problems.