Blacks made up nearly 18 percent of new graduate enrollments in public administration and 12 percent in education, business, and social and behavioral sciences. But Blacks were just 3.2 percent of all new graduate enrollments in the physical sciences.
John Urschel, an offensive guard for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League, recently completed his first semester in the mathematics Ph.D. program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He took four courses and had a 4.0 grade point average.
Only 4 percent of the members of America’s professional orchestra musicians are Black or Latino, according to the League of American Orchestras. A new fellows program at the University of Cincinnati, in conjunction with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, seeks to increase diversity in the field.
Before coming to Oregon State in 2015 as associate dean of the Graduate School, Dr. Jennifer Dennis served for 11 years on the faculty of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
The Graduate Initiative for Diversity, Inclusion and Access aims to increase the diversity of the student body in the graduate school at the university and to broaden academic support for underrepresented minority students.
Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, has announced the establishment of the Diversity, Excellence, and Inclusion Scholarships. Recipients will receive full-tuition credits and a $10,000 stipend for master’s degree programs in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts.
The Academy for Future Science Faculty consists of individual and group-based professional development activities, discussions with fellow students, and highly skilled mentors serving as coaches, many of them minorities themselves, trained in diversity issues.
The Minority Training Program in Cancer Control Research aims to encourage Black and other minority graduate students to pursue doctoral degrees and careers in research relating to cancer.
The Leadership Alliance Mellon Initiative seeks to encourage students from underrepresented minority groups to pursue graduate studies in the humanities, education, and social sciences.
Four Black men earned doctorates this spring in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State under the mentorship of Dr. Terrell Strayhorn, the youngest full professor in the university’s history.
Each year, only about 1,000 African Americans men earn doctoral degrees. Thus, it is noteworthy that this spring four African American men earned their doctoral degrees in one department at Louisiana State University.
One important finding in the Council of Graduate Schools report was that minority doctoral students had the most difficulty when they entered the dissertation phase of their doctoral programs.
The university has offered a pharmacy doctoral program since 2010. The new graduate programs will focus on pharmaceutical research with concentrations in drug design or drug delivery.
The society’s goal is to create a network of scholars who “serve as examples of scholarship, leadership, character, service, and advocacy for students who have been traditionally underrepresented in the academy.”
The organization aimed at helping Black women graduate students, was formed in January 2013 with 15 members. Today there are more than 90 people involved with the program, including students, faculty, and alumni.
According to the National Science Foundation, there were 18 academic fields where none of the doctorates awarded in 2013 went to an African American. More than 1,800 doctorates were awarded in these fields.
In 2013, African Americans earned 6.4 percent of all doctoral degrees awarded to U.S. students. Therefore, African Americans earned about one half the number of doctorates that would be the case if racial parity with the Black population prevailed.
In 2013, there were 176,208 fewer African American students enrolled in all levels higher education than was the case in 2011. But in graduate schools, African American enrollments continue to edge upward.
The new initiative will include five, full-tuition scholarships to the Graduate School of Journalism and a summer internship program in New York for 20 undergraduates from minority-serving institutions.
The Council on Graduate Schools reports that 40,584 African Americans enrolled in graduate programs for the first time in the fall of 2013. Of these, 69 percent were women.
A new report from the Council on Graduate Schools shows that the number of foreign applicants to U.S. graduate schools in 2014 from Africa increased by 9 percent from a year ago. Black acceptances were up 3 percent.
Underrepresented minorities made up 5.2 percent of the applicant pool for graduate programs at Princeton University. There were 196 African Americans in the applicant pool, making up 1.8 percent of all applicants.
Helen Easterling Williams is the former dean of the School of Education and professor of doctoral studies at Azusa Pacific University in California. From 1997 to 2006, Dr. Williams held several leadership posts at the University of Delaware.
From 2005 to 2009, 19 percent of all Ph.D.s awarded in chemistry at LSU were earned by African Americans. Blacks were less than 10 percent of the chemistry Ph.D. recipients at the other 49 leading chemistry departments in the nation.
Last summer, eight Howard students spent eight weeks conducting bioengineering research on the University of California, San Diego campus. Now, two of the eight will enroll in the UCSD Ph.D. program in bioengineering.
Since 2009, Dr. Wanda J. Blanchett has been serving as dean of the School of Education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Earlier, she held associate dean posts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Colorado-Denver.
Using a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 24 minority students at the University of Iowa will receive $40,000 scholarships over the next three years. The university will provide an additional $10,000 to the 24 students.
This year Howard University in Washington, D.C. is awarding 105 doctoral degrees. This is the highest number of doctorates ever awarded by Howard in its history, dating back to 1867.
Maria Eliza Hamilton Abegunde will be first student to be awarded a Ph.D. in African Diaspora studies at Indiana University. After receiving her degree, she will serve as a summer scholar at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Under the agreement, one Ron Brown Scholar will receive a full tuition scholarship and a $10,000 stipend to enroll in the 10-month master in management program at Wake Forest.
In 1967 Ida Stephens Owens received a Ph.D. in physiology from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She went on to conduct important research on drug biotransformation at the National Institutes of Health.
The College of Education at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee has received approval to offer a new master’s degree program in curriculum and instruction. The university hopes to enroll 20 students in the program’s first year.
The consortium, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, includes Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of California at Los Angeles and is led by the University of California at Berkeley.
Professor Tate will oversee 50 Ph.D. and 19 master’s degree programs with enrollments of about 1,800 students. When he takes office on July 1, Dr. Tate will also hold the title of vice provost for graduate education.
According to data on students who earned doctoral degrees in 2012, nearly 40 percent of African American doctoral recipients funded their education through their own resources compared to 21 percent of Whites.
Overall African American enrollments in higher education dropped by 3.4 percent from 2011 to 2012. But it appears that in graduate schools, African Americans are holding steady.
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