Researchers to Study Black Scholars

The government has granted a research team at the Graduate School of Education almost $120,000 to conduct an unprecedented study into characteristics that may determine success among Black scholars.

Charles V. Willie, professor of Education and Urban Studies, and Susan L. Greenblatt, a research associate at the Ed School, will head the 18-month study, financed by a grant from the National Institute of Education (NIE).

Officially entitled, "Characteristics that Contribute to Excellence Among Black Scholars," the research team plans to study six leading Black scholars in the fields of psychology, economics, philosophy, history, English and political science.

The group is currently polling members of the national professional associations in those fields in order to select the six candidates, Greenblatt said yesterday, adding that the severe shortage of Black academics in mathematics and the natural sciences made studying those fields impractical.

Greenblatt said she hopes the study will determine similar characteristics to show what factors contributed to the success of the academics surveyed "in a society that puts obstacles in front of Blacks in achieving at the Ph.D. level and above."

The study may lead to a prototype of the successful Black scholar, which could be used to "enable society to push those kinds of things" which helped the scholars achieve success in their fields, she said.

"If five or six of our scholars say there was a professor in college who pushed them and made the difference, that would be helpful in the future," Greenblatt added.

The NIE decided to finance the grant because members of a review board felt it might be "significant for historical knowledge and could potentially contribute for current analyses of achievement," Warren G. Kaufman, unsolicited proposal coordinator at the NIE, said yesterday.

The researchers plan to ask the six scholars to write autobiographical essays containing similar materials and then compare their life histories to study educational, occupational and family traits that may have helped them succeed