North Carolina is getting a new biosciences doctoral program.
North Carolina Central University‘s request for a Ph.D. program in integrated biosciences has been approved by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. The program is scheduled to start enrolling students in the fall of 2012 who would become the first Ph.D. graduates from the Durham, North Carolina university in nearly 50 years.
Hazell Reed, vice chancellor for graduate education and research, said that the decision to offer a biosciences Ph.D. reflects NCCU’s growing research capacity in health disparities and drug discovery. Research of health disparities of racial and ethnic minorities compared with the overall population has been a major focus of the university.
“That’s where our strengths are,” Reed said in a prepared statement. “We have the faculty in place to do it, and we have state-of-the-art research and laboratory facilities.”
The program would be housed in the university’s College of Science and Technology. But the program would also tap into other life sciences resources at the university such as the Julius L. Chambers Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute, the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise and the School of Library and Information Sciences.
NCCU is offering the interdisciplinary doctorate on two tracks: biomedical sciences and pharmaceutical sciences. The curriculum will include offerings from the life sciences, physical sciences, computation and information sciences, pharmaceutical sciences and mathematics.
The Healthcare Payments Industry Has a Perception Problem
Healthcare payments are no longer about transactions. It’s about controlling the revenue cycle. And increasingly, that control is not sitting with ISOs.
The university expects the biosciences Ph.D. program to reach an enrollment of about 20 full-time students by its fourth year. About five graduates are expected per year. NCCU is the nation’s first public liberal arts college founded for African Americans and the university said one of the program’s goals is to expand the number of minorities who become scientists in biomedical research. NCCU cites a recent report by the National Science Foundation that said that African Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, but account for only 3 percent of scientists and engineers.
“We want good students, period, without regard to race or ethnicity,” Reed said. “But NCCU has a commitment to drawing more minorities and women into the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines.”
NCCU’s first Ph.D. program was in education. From 1955 to 1964, the school, then known as the North Carolina College at Durham, awarded five doctoral degrees.