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Faculty Diversification Not Progressing in Chemistry
The top fifty chemistry departments in the United States have made no progress toward diversifying their faculties in the last decade, according to Science magazine. Reporting on a study led by Donna Nelson, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, Science noted that although the number of Ph.D.'s awarded to blacks has more than doubled since 1990, only one black candidate has been hired as an assistant professor at a top-fifty department in that time. Nelson defined the top departments as those carrying out the most research. Together, blacks and Hispanics constitute a mere 1 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty members in those departments.
Several chemistry department chairs told Science that despite the increase in the number of Ph.D.'s granted to under-represented minorities, the pool of candidates remains very small, making hiring difficult. Others suggest that academia has been unable to match the compensation offered by businesses that are also trying to increase minority hires. But some chemists suggested that other practices, such as marginalizing minority faculty members and overloading them with introductory courses, contribute to the problem.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is concerned about the issue and is assembling a task force to look into it, says Paul Walter, a member of the ACS council and a past president of both the ACS and the AAUP. "It's disturbing that at the same time that the number of underrepresented minorities awarded Ph.D.'s is increasing, the number in assistant professor positions is dropping," Walter says, adding that "even from a selfish point of view, it's something chemists need to worry about. If the proportion of blacks and Hispanics among chemists doesn't keep up with the proportion of these groups in the general population, who's going to do chemistry in the future?" Meanwhile, Nelson says that her research suggests that the problem is not confined to chemistry. She has completed similar surveys of chemical engineering and physics departments, and reports that the results are almost as bad. Surveys on several other scientific fields are
under way.
"One thing universities can do to ameliorate the situation is to pay attention to what the women and minorities in science departments are saying," Nelson says. "Such individuals are best positioned to see the disincentives that may be keeping others out."
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