A new honor society on campus is looking to increase diversity in UF’s graduate programs.
UF became the 13th school to join the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society, which encourages diversity in graduate student education. The first members will be inducted in April, said Tyisha Hathorn, the director of UF’s graduate minority programs.
The honor society was founded by Howard University and Yale University in 2005, she said. Juan E. Gilbert, UF’s Banks Preeminence chair in engineering, wanted to bring the program to UF after hearing about it from the dean of Howard University.
The program seeks to connect minority graduate students with others across the country, she said. Because different students are a minority in different fields, this could include women in engineering, men in nursing, African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans.
UF has 16 colleges, with 290 graduate programs and about 16,000 graduate students, Hathorn said. Because of this, diversity is important among faculty and students.
“In the classrooms, if we have all male professors, females won’t see themselves in that role,” Hathorn said.
Caitlin Banks, a 24-year-old UF rehabilitation science graduate student, said she is considering applying for the diversity honor society.
Because many of her classes are small, Banks, who is half-black, said it’s difficult to see many minority students in them.
In UF’s graduate programs, new students are paired with mentors, who are matched with each other based on their area of research and background, Hathorn said. For Banks, her mentor is also female and a physical therapist in Gainesville.
But Banks said while she believes that while diversity is important, UF shouldn’t admit graduate students only to encourage it and should promote it through honor societies, such as the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society .
“I think any university can do more to encourage diversity in graduate programs, but it’s much more complicated than doing so in an undergraduate program,” Banks said.
