The Herald Sum October 8, 2011 NCCU gets final approval for new Ph.D. program By Neil Offen DURHAM - After more than 50 years, N.C. Central University will once again have a doctoral program. The university's Ph.D. program in integrated biosciences received final approval Friday from the UNC system's Board of Governors, the last step in the process that began two years ago. The approval is " an acknowledgement of the transformation of N.C. Central University to a more comprehensive university, capitalizing on its strengths that we have in the basic sciences, biotechnology and biomedical services," Central Chancellor Charlie Nelms said. The interdisciplinary doctorate will be offered on two tracks, biomedical sciences and pharmaceutical sciences. The program, housed in the College of Science and Technology, will draw also on the resources of NCCU's Julius L. Chambers Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute, the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise and the School of Library and Information Sciences. The curriculum will include offerings from the life sciences, physical sciences, computation and information sciences, pharmaceutical sciences and mathematics. NCCU will now begin recruiting students to enter the program in fall 2012, and would award its degrees four years later. "There is a diverse population of extremely bright students who want to be leaders in health disparities research," said Chanta Haywood, the university's dean of graduate studies who shepherded the program to fruition. " I'm confident that we'll attract them to our program." NCCU expects the program to reach an enrollment of about 20 full-time students in its fourth year of operation, and to graduate about five per year. An additional aim of the program is to expand the number of minority scientists, particularly African-Americans, in biomedical research. A recent report by the National Science Foundation noted that African-Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, but account for only 3 percent of the work force of scientists and engineers. The university, then known as the N.C. College at Durham, had a short-lived doctoral program in the field of education from 1955 to 1964. Five candidates earned their doctorates during that time, including Walter M. Brown, a future dean of the NCCU School of Education, who received the first Ph.D. awarded by a historically black college or university in the United States. According to NCCU historian Jerry Gershenhorn, the education doctoral program was established because of a " concerted effort by white officials to circumvent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that called for equal higher educational opportunities for blacks and whites." If those opportunities were not available to black students at black colleges, Gershenhorn wrote in The North Carolina Historical Review, then the black students would have to be admitted to historically white public institutions, " an eventuality white officials sought to delay." In the early 1960s, a report prepared by the state Board of Higher Education concluded that the program had inadequate facilities and the General Assembly endorsed a recommendation limiting doctoral programs to three system campuses: UNC Chapel Hill, N.C. State University and UNC Greensboro. The university is now looking at the possibility of future doctoral programs. Nelms said any future programs also would capitalize on university strengths and would likely include programs in educational leadership, with a focus on urban and rural education, library and information sciences and speech and hearing science. " What we're going to do is not try to jump out there and do this all at once," Nelms said. " We're going to take our time and make sure they are top-quality programs." Staff writer Gregory Childress contributed to this report. SANDRA M. PHOENIX Program Director HBCU Library Alliance sphoenix@hbculibraries.org<mailto:sphoenix@hbculibraries.org> www.hbculibraries.org<http://www.hbculibraries.org/> 404.592.4820 Skype:sandra.phoenix1 1438 West Peachtree Street NW Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Toll Free: 1.800.999.8558 (Lyrasis) Fax: 404.892.7879 www.lyrasis.org<http://www.lyrasis.org/> Honor the ancestors, honor the children.