A new study by the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity published in Chemical & Engineering News finds that underrepresented minorities make up just 4 percent of all chemistry professors at the 50 U.S. colleges that have the largest budgets for chemical research. Furthermore, the study found that little progress has been made in increasing the number of minority chemistry professors over the past 30 years.
African Americans made up just 1 percent of the chemistry professors at these schools, despite the fact that 4 percent of all doctoral recipients in chemistry are Black. The survey found 23 African American chemistry faculty at these 50 colleges and university out of a total of 1,605.
There were three Black faculty members in the chemistry department at the University of Washington in Seattle. Rutgers University in New Jersey, the University of Michigan, and the Georgia Institute of Technology each had two Black faculty members in their chemistry departments. None of the other 50 colleges and universities had more than one. The most striking figure is that at 30 of the 50 colleges and universities with the largest budgets for chemical research, there were no African Americans on their faculties. These included Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Harvard, and Columbia.
