Terry Esper, logistics manager for Hallmark Cards, ended one lengthy corporate conference day with the social ritual of joining a colleague for a post-session beer. He was totally unaware the relaxing moment was about to change his life. “He asked me,” Dr. Esper recalls, “what I would do if I had enough money and didn’t…

No one has traveled a longer route to a Ph.D. than Yusuf Nur, born in Somalia into a family of nomadic, impoverished goat and camel tenders. As a young boy, he was expected to grow up and take his place among the elders herding animals. Then, at age five, a difficult life turned even bleaker.…

As a promising doctoral student on the job market, Patricia Martinez was seeking a home at a strong, Hispanic-serving college when she visited informally at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Interviewing with the head of the doctoral program there, she found herself being whisked, to her astonishment, into introductory meetings with the business school dean…

Cruising down the MBA track at Howard University, Leyland Lucas was startled when a professor pulled him aside and asked if he had ever considered an academic career. “I said, ‘That’s not where I want  to be.’” But a seed had been planted, and Lucas eventually found himself in an adjunct teaching spot after he…