History of GMAP

In 1973 a group of students, faculty, and staff began working together to establish what they named the Organization of Black Concerns. The goal of the organization was to increase the number of Black graduate students entering and graduating from Iowa State. The organization developed a set of services designed to help talented underrepresented graduate students gain admission to the university, grow academically and culturally, complete a course of study, and graduate with a degree of choice!

The Graduate Minority Assistantship Program (GMAP) was created out of this earlier successful endeavor with an overall goal of ensuring that each admitted graduate student received financial, academic, and cultural support necessary for entry, matriculation, and graduation.

Today, GMAP supports underrepresented graduate students in departments throughout the university and is a vital component of the Graduate College initiative to recruit underrepresented graduate students to Iowa State. GMAP is the program out of which the George Washington Carver Doctoral Fellowship was created, and, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, GMAP also helps fund the Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) Fellowship.

The administration of GMAP and initiatives to recruit and retain underrepresented minority students is centralized in the Graduate College and managed by Thelma Harding, Coordinator, Graduate Recruitment and Retention.