North Carolina State University Is a Mecca for Black Mathematicians


11-21-07, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

According to new data compiled by Donna J. Nelson at the University of Oklahoma, blacks make up only 1.5 percent of the total faculty in the mathematics departments at the 100 universities that conduct the most research in the discipline. All told there are 64 black faculty in the mathematics departments of these 100 universities.

There are nine black mathematicians at Jackson State University in Mississippi, four at Morgan State University in Maryland, and six at Norfolk State University in Virginia. These three historically black universities are all among the universities with the 100 largest research budgets in the field. This means there are only 43 black mathematicians at the remaining 97 predominantly white universities.

Remarkably, according to Dr. Nelson’s research, there are six black full professors teaching mathematics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. They make up more than 10 percent of the total mathematics faculty at the university.

There are three black faculty members in the mathematics departments at Penn State and the University of Colorado. None of the other 94 predominantly white universities has more than two black mathematicians on its faculty.

Two thirds of the 100 universities with the largest budgets for mathematics research have no black faculty mathematics faculty whatsoever.

This should be an area that we concentrate on.

We should have been focusing on the sciences for ages. Presents a different set of challenges but in reality they are oppportunities.