As a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Jerome Taylor had a personal mission to uplift Black students in a largely white field. (Photo by Kaycee Orwig/PublicSource)
by Naomi Harris, PublicSource
As Black students protested to make the University of Pittsburgh more equitable, one professor saw a chance to uplift Black students. More than 50 years later, the school is still learning from his short-lived, but impactful effort.
When Jerome Taylor joined Pitt’s psychology faculty in the late 1960s, he saw a clear problem. It was overwhelmingly white. And so were the students.
“They were in a terrible condition at the outset,” Taylor said. “They eventually put up some resources to make a difference in terms of that long history of drought.”
As a professor and director of the department’s clinic, he built a mentoring program using $30,000 from the university, recruiting students primarily from historically Black colleges and universities. He also hosted summer workshops to show students that he and the university were committed to supporting Black graduate students.
His efforts worked. He’d attracted Black students in a field badly in need of diversification. But success came with a new challenge: He’d recruited more students than he’d be able to mentor one-on-one.
His solution was to create a new community, bringing students together as a group to offer his insights on their work and to give them a chance to collaborate with one another.
For Black students and young faculty, mentorship offers critical support on research projects, opportunities to collaborate and network and, above that, a feeling that they are welcome in a field with longstanding barriers for Black academics.
In 2021, the ranks of tenured professors in the Pittsburgh area are still overwhelmingly white. Universities like Pitt have committed to increasing diversity, but doing so demands institutional changes, including giving Black students more of the types of supports that Taylor committed to decades ago.
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