A Focus on  Physics

Too few African American students are choosing physics as an area of study, say Black educators

By Ronald Roach

PETERSBURG, Va.
r. James Davenport takes a great deal of pride in having taught hundreds of students who have graduated from Virginia State University with bachelor's degrees in physics. Among graduates of the college physics program at VSU are luminaries, such as Dr. Demetrius Venable, the current chair of Howard University's Ph.D.-granting physics program. Davenport, a veteran scientist who taught Venable and many others, sees his stewardship of VSU's physics program as a continuation of the legacy established by early 20th century Black physicists at historically Black schools.
"The most talented Black physicists built careers at schools, such as Virginia State, Howard and Fisk because they faced discrimination at other institutions," he says.
These days, Davenport, who is chair of the VSU physics department, worries that too few young Blacks, regardless of whether they attend historically Black schools or majority White institutions, are choosing physics as an undergraduate major and a career option with the acquisition of a Ph.D.
Historically, the lack of exposure among Black students to rigorous college prep science and mathematics courses in junior and senior high school has long limited the participation of Blacks potentially able to succeed in the discipline. In more recent years, the recruitment efforts by engineering and health science coalitions have contributed to a highly competitive environment for attracting academically prepared Blacks into undergraduate and graduate physics programs, according to observers.
Nationally, the U.S. Department of Education reports that Blacks obtaining degrees in physics in 1997 were represented as follows: associate's degrees, 11.1 percent; bachelor's, 5.1 percent; master's, 4.7 percent; and doctorates, 1.9  percent.
Although a number of African American physicists acknowledge the profession has to do a better job at making Black students aware of opportunities in physics before they get to college, there also exists strong opinions that low Black student enrollment numbers represent the larger reality of a declining interest in physics by American students in general. Some critics of American public education, including Black physicists, decry the lack of quality of K-12 science education in the United States and blame the national scientific leadership for not pushing hard enough for reforms that would improve overall math and science education at the K-12 level and increase undergraduate and graduate school opportunities for U.S. students.
"There has to be more support for American-born students in the sciences," says Dr. Keith H. Jackson, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and a former Howard University professor.