Juan Gilbert invents computer software to learn by. A major breakthrough he’s had is not high-tech, however: He has cracked the puzzle of how to turn unheralded African-American students into academic whizzes. The key is what he calls the Asian model.
This finding may amount to a godsend for academic America, which is struggling to better reflect the nation’s racial diversity. The Journal Sentinel recently reported that, despite its prestige, the University of Wisconsin-Madison ranks low as a recruiting stop for many major corporations because it’s too racially homogeneous.