Diversity in Our Department

We are proud of the several statistical measures (detailed below) that illustrate how our department offers a welcoming and nurturing environment for both women and minorities.

Out of a total of 19 regular tenured/tenure-track physics faculty members on the Kent campus, we have four women professors (all tenured) — a 21% level of representation.

While the graph below (from the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics) illustrates that about 10% of US PhD-granting departments (21 institutions) have four or more women on their faculty, most of these departments are much larger than ours. Based on AY 04/05 listings of regular faculty at these 21 universities, it is found that only four other physics departments have women represented at close to the 20% level.

Furthermore, ours is one of only ten physics departments in the United States where AIP reports that 25% or more of the PhD recipients during 1999-2003 were women.

We are the # 6 physics department nationwide in terms of our total number of African-American PhD graduates, based on data collected by the National Science Foundation over the period 1973 - 1999. The top 5, in rank order, are Stanford, Howard, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Alabama A&M. Again, we are much smaller than Stanford, MIT and Berkeley, so a ranking based on minority PhDs per faculty would likely move us even higher.

Winter Break: Dec 08 / Jan 09: There is now an update of our ranking for African-American PhD graduates.

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 below, 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.

Congratulations to our PhD Physics Alumnus Prof. Joe Whitehead.