Building Bridges to Diversity in Physics and Astronomy

Mercury, May/June 2005 Table of Contents

Courtesy NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

by Keivan G. Stassun

Here’s a fact that you can use to test whether you’re a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full kind of person: The number of minorities awarded the Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics nationally over the past twenty years averaged just four individuals per year. To put this another way, each of our astronomy/astrophysics Ph.D.-granting programs (there are about fifty of them) produce an average of one minority Ph.D. recipient every thirteen years.

It doesn’t have to be this way. After all, astronomy may be the most well suited of all the sciences for its ability to enthrall the public and to inspire the next generation of scientists. The images we produce are awe-inspiring and majestic, the phenomena we study grand and fantastic. Even the places we work—mammoth observatories high atop remote mountains—are strange and romantic. Given the universal appeal and broad public support for astronomy, one might expect that our profession should have no difficulty attracting talented individuals representing a broad cross-section of our multicultural society.

Sadly, this is not the case. In fact, astronomy is among the least representative of the sciences in terms of the ethnic makeup of its practitioners. Under-represented minorities—which in the sciences are Hispanic-, African-, and Native-Americans—comprise more than 25% of the U.S. population yet represent less than 3% of professional astronomers. Currently, of the more than 650 professional astronomers at Ph.D.-granting institutions in the U.S., seven are African-American, nine are Hispanic-American, only one is Native American.

I certainly wouldn’t blame you for seeing the glass as half-empty. But there is a positive side. The glass-half-full perspective is this: if every astronomy Ph.D. program committed to graduating just two minority students every thirteen years, we could increase the national production of minority Ph.D. recipients in astronomy by 100%!

This may seem sarcastic, or glib, especially after that litany of depressing statistics. But I sincerely do believe there is cause for optimism. Doubling the number of minorities earning the Ph.D. in astronomy is a reachable goal. But achieving this goal requires asking open-minded, critical questions about how we have traditionally gone about doing things and a willingness to accept that some of the answers may be, at least at first, difficult to hear.

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