Morgan Physics and Engineering Physics Chair Receives National Honors For Work in Diversity and Inclusion

Courtesy of Morgan State University

Considerable progress has been made in diversifying STEM fields, with more Black and brown aspiring scientists earning bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees today than in previous decades. However, recent data indicate that achieving equity in these fields remains a “work in progress.”

Among those leading the charge—and doing the work— to stem this great divide is Willie S. Rockward, Ph.D., chair and professor of Physics and Engineering Physics at Morgan. During his 30-year career as a professional in academia and government, the HBCU graduate has developed expertise in fields ranging from nanolithography and terahertz imaging to extreme ultraviolet laser light and spectroscopic analysis of binary star systems. But it is his decades-long quest to increase diversity and inclusion in STEM, particularly in his chosen field of physics where less than 1% are reported to be Black, that has earned him his most recent honor.

The American Physical Society (APS) has named Dr. Rockward one of the prestigious organization’s four Forum on Diversity and Inclusion Fellows for 2024. The fellowship recognizes his “exemplary leadership, dedication, mentoring and service to the physics community that have increased diversity and advanced inclusive practices in physics.”

The APS Fellowship is the second high-level honor in the last two years that acknowledged Dr. Rockward’s long striving toward equity. In 2022, Sigma Pi Sigma, the U.S. physics honor society, selected him as one of its two Worth Seagondollar Service Award recipients. That rarely bestowed honor, presented by the Society of Physics Students (SPS) Executive Committee, recognized his exemplary service to SPS and Sigma Pi Sigma.

Raised in southeastern Louisiana by an educationally focused mom, Rockward began honing his scientific talent when an injury ended his dream of football stardom at Grambling, where he graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Physics. He followed his undergraduate studies with enrollment in graduate programs in physics, at the State University of New York at Albany, where he earned a master’s degree, then at Georgia Tech, where he earned another master’s and his doctorate.

Rockward worked as a research physicist for the Air Force Research Laboratory while pursuing his doctorate, before beginning a prolific term on the faculty of historically Black Morehouse College, beginning in 1998. At Morehouse, he launched and helped sustain numerous innovative programs that increased enrollment and graduation of underrepresented minority physics students and enhanced their college research experiences and their post-graduation careers. His role as adviser of the SPS chapter at Morehouse was vital to that work.

Rockward served as national president of Sigma Pi Sigma from 2014 to 2018, the year he joined Morgan, and served as president of the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) during his first two years at the National Treasure. Two Christian congregations are among those he has served outside of his STEM field: he is the longtime pastor of the Divine Unity Missionary Baptist Church in East Point, Georgia, and associate minister of Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Morgan family salutes Willie S. Rockward for his outstanding stewardship of future physicists of color and for his leading role in developing career pipelines for students from groups underrepresented in STEM.