By Raymond Matthews
UC Santa Barbara’s Classics department has won the Society for Classical Studies’ 2019 Award for Equity for its work with Howard University in Washington, D.C. to increase the number of black graduate students enrolled as PhD candidates in the department.
The award is given to “an institution that has taken measures to improve equality and diversity in our field and whose culture…is a model for other institutions,” according to the Society, the national organization of the Classics discipline.
UCSB is currently working with Howard and other historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) as part of an initiative that gives financial grants to various departments on campus. These grants allow potential PhD candidates from HBCUs like Howard to come to UCSB for six weeks over the summer to participate in immersive research programs led by professors and graduate students.
The UC Office of the President (UCOP) started the UCSB-HBCU program in 2012 to address the university system’s historically low number of black students in graduate and professional programs. Between 2013 and 2017, the five-year average enrollment of black students in UC doctoral programs was only three percent.
Since the program started, UCOP reports that 44 percent of the program’s participants have gone on to enroll in UC graduate programs.
During the summer session of the 2018-2019 school year, Brice Erickson, a professor in the Classics Department, led a group of four Howard University students ― Cyerra Haywood, Aiesha Muhammad, Jacquelyn Chin and Jyohomson Dawadi ― in a research program based on ancient Greek archaeology and anthropology.
For this program, the students spent four weeks studying Ancient Greek at UCSB, followed by a two-week excursion to Greece to study ancient artifacts and texts at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
These four students were the first participants in UCSB-HBCU’s summer research program within the Classics department, and if they apply to the Classics department’s PhD program, they’ll be the first students from this program to come to UCSB full time.
UC Santa Barbara Classics professor Brice Erickson’s work has been instrumental in increasing diversity within the Classics department.
“The UCSB-HBCU program is meant to provide students with unique insights into various departments at different UC campuses, and in turn we hope to increase diversity within PhD programs here at the university by providing students from HBCUs with the best experience here as possible,” Erickson said.
In the Classics department specifically, Erickson is working on how to break down the barriers to entry that HBCU students face when applying to study Classics at the graduate level.
“My particular program works with Howard because Howard is the only HBCU with its own Classics department,” Erickson said. “I set up this program to focus on Ancient Greek because Howard only offers Latin programs, but in order to get into graduate level Classics programs you need to study Greek as well. With this program I’m trying to open the door for HBCU students to be eligible for PhD programs in Classics departments,” he said.
Erickson says Classics departments in American universities have been shrinking in recent years, and he believes that increasing diversity within the discipline will keep Classics relevant in modern academics.
“We’re a department that wants to see a more diverse group of people, partly to remain relevant in society since we’re a somewhat old discipline. We always want to avoid becoming an old, dead, white male institution,” he said.
“There are one or two students who participated in the summer program who I really hope will apply to the PhD program in the department, and I think they stand a strong chance of being accepted which I’m very excited about,” he said. “We want to rejuvenate the department as much as possible and I think that by recruiting a more diverse pool of students, we can give the Classics department a fresh perspective.”
Raymond Matthews is a third year Political Science major at UC Santa Barbara. He is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.
Four Howard University students took part in the UCSB-HBCU summer program in Greece archaeology and anthropology led by Classics professor Brice Erickson. Students spent four weeks studying Ancient Greek at UC Santa Barbara and then travelled to Athens for two weeks to research artifacts and texts.