Diversity in our department

Since 1973, the National Science Foundation has tracked the production of African-American Physics PhD graduates. Based on NSF's data up through 1999, our department's track record has made us a national leader in this ranking. Now updated data have been released, extending the surveyed period up through 2004 — see the table on the right, which is part of a comprehensive report (.pdf file) released by the American Institute of Physics.

The new data place Kent State in the top six departments nationwide, in a ranking of total graduates, i.e., the ranking is not corrected for the very different total number of faculty and students in each department. Two of the five departments ahead of us (Florida State & Georgia Tech) are 2.5 times larger on average, and so would be expected to have 2.5 times as many graduates in all categories. The other three ahead of us are Historically Black institutions. Thus, among universities with 30 physics faculty or less, and excluding HBCUs, we are the top university in the US for mentoring of African-American PhD Physics graduates.