Ling Gao

Students are calling attention to a lack of Black students and faculty in Yale’s engineering departments.

Last month, in a page of the News’ Black History Month special issue, nine Yale students contributed to a section called “Being a Black engineer at Yale,” highlighting their experiences as Black students in departments such as Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. Students expressed feelings of isolation and discouragement at the lack of representation in the University’s STEM majors.

“It’s discouraging to walk into an auditorium where I can count on one hand the amount of other Black people in my lectures,” Deja Dunlap ’26, a Black applied mathematics major, told the News. “In discussion, I feel pressured to be exceptional and to be more than just the ‘Black person in the room.’”

Dunlap also highlighted the lack of Black professors in Yale’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Just two out of 153 faculty members in SEAS identify as Black or African American, a meager 1.3 percent compared to five percent across all Yale faculty and six percent among the faculty of Arts and Sciences.

This issue is not unique to Yale; Ivies across the country hire disproportionately low Black faculty members to teach engineering and other STEM fields. Zero percent and four percent of Harvard’s tenure-track and tenured engineering faculty are Black or African-American, respectively. The Dartmouth Thayer School of Engineering has one Black associate professor out of 70 faculty members.

Vincent Wilczynski, deputy dean of the engineering school, declined to comment about the lack of Black faculty representation. He pointed instead to the school’s “fairly robust DEIB program,” which houses several affinity groups and professional organizations for students from historically marginalized backgrounds.

Wilczynski also told the News that Charles Brown, a physics professor and National Society of Black Engineers faculty advisor, will be bringing a team of over 10 Yale members of the National Society of Black Engineers – of which Dunlap is the Yale chapter vice president – to the organization’s annual meeting in Atlanta, which will take place later this month.

Brown did not respond to the News’ request for comment on the trip.

Wilczynski said that the convention is an exciting opportunity for students to meet and network with colleagues from all over the nation.

“From the school side we go ahead and make sure that the support is there and work hard to make sure that there’s a faculty advisor to integrate students into this professional society network,” he added.

Solomon Gonzalez ’23, who graduated from Yale last spring with a degree in mechanical engineering, said that NSBE had less of a presence on campus when he arrived at Yale. 

He described his experience in the major as “individual.”

“It felt like I was just doing it on my own,” Gonzalez said. “Being part of a major and seeing nobody else who looks like you, it makes you wonder, ‘Does it even make sense that I’m here?’”

Both Dunlap and Gonzalez said that the number of Black peers in their majors decreased as they moved to more advanced courses.

Dunlap, who attended a public high school in Las Vegas, recalled her experience taking Math 115 –– an intermediate course –– while others in the major began in Math 120, which is more advanced. She speculated that “working from behind” could discourage students from public high schools — who are disproportionately students of color. 

She suggested that Yale permit students to take introductory math courses such as Math 115 for free the summer prior to their first year in exchange for course credit. Yale does provide preparatory Online Experiences for Yale Scholars, a free program that helps students adapt to the rigor of quantitative study at Yale — though the program does not count for credit.

“I didn’t realize it would be like this when I arrived,” said Dunlap, referring to the introductory math sequence. “Yale could do more to acclimate students from lower-income backgrounds.”

Yale’s School of Engineering and Applied Science was founded in 1852.