Blacks in Academic Psychology

African Americans have a greater presence in faculty positions in the discipline of psychology than they do in most other scientific fields. Research by Donna J. Nelson, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, has found 107 black faculty members teaching at the 100 universities with the largest research budgets in the field. Blacks make up 3.4 percent of all psychology faculty at these 100 universities.

According to Professor Nelson’s research, there are six black psychologists teaching at the University of Michigan, the most of any predominantly white educational institution in this group of 100 universities. There are four black psychologists each at the University of Virginia, Michigan State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of South Carolina, and Columbia Teachers College.

Of the 107 black psychology faculty, 56 are women. There are 39 full professors of psychology who are black, but only 12 of them are women.

Copyright © 2008. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.