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Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Meeting Summary (2003)

Chapter: Transforming the Academic Workplace: Socializing Underrepresented Minorities into Faculty Life

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Suggested Citation:"Transforming the Academic Workplace: Socializing Underrepresented Minorities into Faculty Life." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2003. Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Meeting Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10727.
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Page 138
Suggested Citation:"Transforming the Academic Workplace: Socializing Underrepresented Minorities into Faculty Life." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2003. Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Meeting Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10727.
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Page 139
Suggested Citation:"Transforming the Academic Workplace: Socializing Underrepresented Minorities into Faculty Life." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2003. Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Meeting Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10727.
×
Page 140
Suggested Citation:"Transforming the Academic Workplace: Socializing Underrepresented Minorities into Faculty Life." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2003. Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Meeting Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10727.
×
Page 141
Suggested Citation:"Transforming the Academic Workplace: Socializing Underrepresented Minorities into Faculty Life." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2003. Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Meeting Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10727.
×
Page 142
Suggested Citation:"Transforming the Academic Workplace: Socializing Underrepresented Minorities into Faculty Life." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2003. Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Meeting Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10727.
×
Page 143
Suggested Citation:"Transforming the Academic Workplace: Socializing Underrepresented Minorities into Faculty Life." National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. 2003. Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Meeting Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10727.
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Page 144

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Saundra D. Johnson, Executive Director Cecilia Lucero, Ph.D., Grants and Research Specialist The National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science (GEM) INTRODUCTION ,~ The National GEM Consortium is a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation founded in 1976. Our mission is to enhance the value of the nation's human capital in science and engineering fields by increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans in master's and Ph.D. studies in these fields. GEM accomplishes its mission by identifying and attracting exceptional students to graduate schools, matching their interests and talents with the needs of GEM member universities and company sponsors, and providing them full financial support as well as academic and professional development op- portunities to help them achieve their potential as scientists and engineers. STATEMENT OF POSITION While it is crucial to address the need for greater diversity of scien- tists and engineers in industry and government, it is GEM's position that diversity in the academic workplace is an even more exigent issue that requires the attention of not only the academic community, but corpora- tions and government agencies as well. Industry and local, state, and fed- eral governments are stakeholders in the academic enterprise as much as universities and students themselves are. They, too, must make diversity in the professoriate a priority. Increasing diversity among science and engineering faculties is criti- cal because women and minority professors challenge the prevailing ste- 138

GEM reotypes that females and certain racial and ethnic groups are not suited for the more prestigious and rigorous "hard" disciplines (Eisenhart and Finkel, 1998~. They serve as role models and mentors to female and mi- nority students by affirming their presence and providing a positive out- look about school and about the future (Gregory, 1999; Smith, 1989~. Because faculty create and legitimize knowledge, they determine the quality of the scientific enterprise within academia as well as in industry and government research laboratories. As the world becomes more highly technological and wrestles with more complicated scientific challenges, the need for minority scientists and engineers among the faculty grows more urgent, especially to mentor the next generation of scientists and engineers. It is essential that the American academy, particularly research institutions, cultivate the best scientific minds and ensure full participa- tion in the scientific/technological enterprise, not just to enhance U.S. eco- nomic prospects, but to address global health and environmental issues (Essien, 1997~. "If science is to continue to prosper and move forward," the National Academy of Sciences (2000) states, "we must ensure that no source of scientific intellect is overlooked or lost" (p. vii). Given the dra- matic demographic shifts in the population, "a science establishment run primarily by white males runs the danger of alienating our nation and our people from science" (National Academy of Sciences, 2000, p. 4~. Higher-education policies, therefore, must be more responsive to the problem of underrepresentation of minorities in science and engineering faculties of American colleges and universities. The current context of the academic workplace presents all stakeholders, including organizations like GEM, with a prime opportunity to shape policies that can make the science and engineering professoriate truly diverse. THE CURRENT CONTEXT OF THE ACADEMIC WORKPLACE During the l990s, as the academy braced itself for the 21st century, the daunting challenges arising from the explosion of information tech- nology, the constraining of financial resources for postsecondary educa- tion, and the burgeoning of a multicultural society led higher education researchers and practitioners to devote increasing attention to the recruit- ment, hiring, and career development of the "new academic generation" (Finkelstein, Seal, and Schuster, 1995~. College and university departments had virtually suspended customs associated with these activities during the 1970s and 1980s, due to shortages of funding and faculty prospects (Boice,1992~. In the late 1980s, the urgency to replenish the pool of faculty who were expected to retire in the coming decades nearly 340,000 by the year 2004 (Schuster, 1990) revived recruitment and hiring efforts.

PAN-~CANIZAHONAL SUMMIT Ongoing research about faculty life, however, continued to find that stress, isolation, and myriad other ills were debilitating new professors (Dunn, Rouse, and Seff, 1994~. Thus, because new faculty are expected to be on the "front lines" determining "on a daily basis how well the [higher education] system adapts to new realities" (Finkelstein, Seal, and Schuster, 1995, p. l), scholars began to sharpen their focus on new faculty socialization. Because multiculturalism has become one of the exigent realities of the academy, colleges and universities have been making concerted ef- forts to enlist more minorities and women into the ranks of the new aca- demic generation. A 1996 American Council on Education (ACE) report found, for example, that the number of full-time faculty of color grew by 43.7 percent during the 1983-1993 period (Carter and Wilson, 1996~. The most recent ACE report shows that minority faculty continue to make gains, their numbers having increased by more than 28 percent during the 1991-1999 period (Harvey, 2002~. Despite the progress of women and minority professors, however, the proportion of them who are employed full-time and/or awarded ten- ure remains abysmally low, especially relative to their white male coun- terparts. This is especially true in science and engineering. While women and faculty of color are concentrated in disciplines such as education, so- cial work, and nursing, they are "practically invisible" in engineering and science (Gregory, 1999, p. xi). Furthermore, although the life sciences and civil engineering have become more feminized, sex segregation persists in physics, mathematics, computer sciences/technology, and engineering in general (Grover, 2000~. Referring to science and engineering fields, Turner and Myers, fr. (2000) indicate that "at the critical juncture at which doctorates move to faculty tenure at four-year colleges and universities, there is a [considerable] drop-off among all minority groups, including Asians, who are adequately represented at earlier points along the pipe- line" (p. 183~. Turner and Myers, fr. (2000) analyzed National Science Foundation (NSF) data that illustrate trends from 1977 to 1991. Recent NSF (2000) statistics show that the presence of minority Ph.D. scientists and engineers in the academy has not improved much in the last decade. The current NSF (2000) data, which describe science and engineering employment trends between 1993 and 1997, show that Asian/Pacific Is- landers, non-Hispanic Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indian/Alaskan Natives represented only 18 percent of all Ph.D. scientists and engineers employed full-time in four-year colleges and universities. Minority women are especially underrepresented. A comparison of the total number of ten- ured and tenure-track women of color to all tenured and tenure-track Ph.D. scientists and engineers (not just their particular gender and racial/ethnic groups) underscores the reality that female faculty of color are practically

GEM invisible in academic science and engineering. Black women, for example, represented nearly 0.8 percent of the total and 3.5 percent of all female aca- demic scientists and engineers at these institutions. By comparison, white non-Hispanic males represented 64 percent of the total, and white non-His- panic females represented 81 percent of all women and 18 percent of the total. Furthermore, Black, Latina, and Asian women were less likely than white women or men of any racial/ethnic group to be tenured. Twenty- nine percent of African-American women, 29 percent of Latina women, and 17 percent of Asian women had tenure in 1997, compared to 38 percent of white women, 63 percent of white men, and between 43 and 53 percent of Latino, Black, and Asian men (NSF, 2000~. This "ghettoization"2 limits the presence of faculty of color in the higher education system; worse still, it hinders individual human potential. THE IMPORTANCE OF FACULTY SOCIALIZATION FOR UNDERREPRESENTED MINORITIES Higher-education researchers have considered various explanations for the underrepresentation of minorities among college and university faculties: · The pipeline issue the lack of qualified minority candidates for tenure-track appointments · Market forces low faculty salaries and the lure of lucrative indus- try positions that compel minorities to choose careers outside of academia · The "chilly climate" factor racial, ethnic, and gender bias; isola- tion and an unsupportive work environment; lack of information about tenure and promotion; language or other communication barriers; lack of mentors and lack of support from superiors · The turnover problem-the failure to promote and retain minority faculty despite successful recruitment of excellent candidates. Turnover is often related to the absence of adequate mentorship, the ambiguity of the tenure and promotion process, and other institutional circumstances that Asian/Pacific Islander, Black non-Hispanic, and Hispanic women account for nearly 2 percent of all tenured, and 6 percent of all tenure-track, scientists and engineers at four-year colleges and universities. Black women are 0.4 percent of all tenured and 1.6 percent of all tenure-track science and engineering faculty. There is a preponderance of minority female Ph.D. scientists and engineers in non-tenure-track positions or in institutions with no tenure system for their position (NSF, 2000~. 2Reskin and Roos (1990) use this term to refer to gender segregation, but it may also apply to minority faculty, who, like female academics, are concentrated in lower-ranked positions and shoulder a disproportionate amount of service and committee work.

PAN-~CANIZAHONAL SUMMIT neglect minority faculty development (e.g., "cultural taxation" of minority junior faculty who are expected to serve on minority-serving committees and advise minority students in addition to fulfilling their other teaching and research responsibilities) (Midwest Higher Education Report, 1995~. lust as universities, government agencies, corporate and private foun- dations, and various other educational associations have done, GEM has addressed and continues to address the pipeline issue through its gradu- ate fellowship programs. Diversity initiatives, however, must consider more than just the numerical representation of various racial, ethnic, and gender groups. They must also consider the psychological climate (the perceptions and attitudes between and among groups) and the behavioral climate that is characterized by intergroup relations (Hurtado and Dey, 1997~. Policies must be directed toward eliminating the "chilly climate" and solving the problem of turnover in order to enrich the lives of minority faculty, and to make academic careers attractive to minority graduate stu- dents. These may be accomplished through structured opportunities for faculty socialization "learning the ropes," adoption of or identification with the behaviors, values, beliefs, and attitudes of the academic profes- sion which begin in graduate school. Mentoring is an essential component of faculty socialization. Thus, for many years now, GEM has also provided mentorship training for graduate students' faculty advisers, company internship supervisors, and other mentors. More recently, GEM's programming has evolved to ad- dress more comprehensively the factors that create a "chilly climate" and contribute to turnover of minority science and engineering faculty. For example, GEM's Faculty Bridge Seminar, a weeklong workshop designed to inform graduate students about faculty careers and to socialize novice professors into their roles and responsibilities, helps to demystify the pro- cesses of developing a research agenda, publishing one's scholarship, pre- paring a tenure portfolio, etc. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY Developing policies and implementing change to create a multi- cultural campus is a complex undertaking within colleges and universi- ties. We believe, therefore, that government, industry, and other stake- holders must collaborate with campus communities to develop policies that encourage more innovative, more creative faculty socialization that fulfills the needs of minority academic scientists and engineers. In a timely Change magazine article that reconsiders the purposes and future of doctoral education, Nyquist (2002) identifies various groups who have a stake in graduate education, what their contributions are or might

GEM be in re-envisioning the Ph.D., and what issues they will navigate. Using Nyquist's summary as a guideline, we outline the following recommen- dations to various stakeholders as possible areas of policymaking. While these recommendations are merely a sketch of the possibilities, we offer them in order to begin the process of change. · To university leaders, college deans, department chairs, and others in- volved in preparing the "new academic generation" policies should be di- rected at investing more time and energy in the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities for graduate science and engineering stud- ies. This involves thoughtful design of the doctoral education experience, more meaningful mentoring, more rewards for mentoring, and making expectations and requirements (e.g., of tenure and promotion) explicit. Issues such as opportunity costs, time-to-degree, family responsibilities, etc., should be explicitly addressed. Policies should also encourage criti- cal self-examination of how departmental cultures hinder or help the so- cialization of minority graduate students and novice professors into fac- ulty life (e.g., how professional practices, interactions among colleagues, etc., may be gendered or racialized). · To government agencies, business and industryfoundations, and others who fund doctoral education policies should be directed at increasing outreach to minority communities and their participation in doctoral education; redirect- ing monies toward research and practice associated with faculty socialization (e.g., fund projects like the highly successful Preparing Future Faculty pro- gram); and helping universities to enhance faculty reward structures to en- courage senior colleagues to mentor novice professors. · To colleges and universities, government agencies, nonprofit organiza- tions, and business and industry policies should encourage communica- tion about teaching and research as exciting and rewarding career op- tions. The idea that minority Ph.D.'s have to make a choice between low-wage faculty appointments and lucrative industry careers should be disabused. · To professional societies, educational associations, and others who influ- ence doctoral education policies should be directed at encouraging collabo- ration among stakeholders to establish programming for faculty social- ization, and maintaining conversations about career options for Ph.D.'s, especially in academia. Professional societies, educational associations, and organizations like GEM should highlight the personal and profes- sional benefits that a faculty career presents to minority scientists and engineers. · Finally, to graduate students, working professionals, and other prospec- tive graduate students who aspire to the Ph.D. their own personal policies should be directed at ownership of their graduate school and subsequent career experiences. This requires taking the initiative to ask questions,

PAN-~CANIZAHONAL SUMMIT identifying mentors and role models with whom they can develop pro- ductive relationships, and making sure they are aware of the full spec- trum of careers (and the required roles and responsibilities) that is at hand once they earn their doctorate. REFERENCES Boice, R. (1992~. The New Faculty Member. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Carter, D. and Wilson, R. (1996~. Minorities in Higher Education 1995-1996: Fourteenth Annual Status Report. Washington, DC: American Council on Education. Dunn, D., Rouse, L., and Seff, M. (1994~. "New Faculty Socialization in the Academic Work- place." In J.C. Smart (ed.), Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, Vol. X (pp. 374-416~. Bronx, NY: Agathon Press. Eisenhart, M., and Finkel, E. (1998~. Women's Science: Learning and Succeeding from the Mar- gins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Essien, F. (1997~. "Black Women in the Sciences: Challenges along the Pipeline and in the Academy. In L. Benjamin (ed.), Black Women in the Academy: Promises and Perils (pp. 91- 102~. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press. Finkelstein, M., Seal, R., and Schuster, J. (1995~. The American Faculty in Transition. Paper prepared for the National Center for Education Statistics, NSOPF93, Washington, DC. Glover, J. (2000~. Women and Scientific Employment. New York: St. Martin's Press; London: Macmillan. Gregory, S. (1999~. Black Women in the Academy: The Secrets to Success and Achievement. Rev. ed. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Harvey, W.B. (2002~. Minorities in Higher Education 2001-2002: Nineteenth Annual Status Re- port. Washington, DC: American Council on Education. Hurtado, S., and Dey, E. (1997~. "Achieving the Goals of Multiculturalism and Diversity." In M. Peterson, D. Dill, L. Mets, and Associates (eds.), Planning and Management for a Chang- ing Environment (pp. 405-431~. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Midwest Higher Education Report. (1995~. MHEC Minority Faculty Development Project Final Report. Minneapolis: Midwestern Higher Education Commission. National Academy of Sciences. (2000~. Who Will Do the Science of the Future? Washington, DC: National Academy Press. National Science Foundation. (2000~. Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Sci- ence and Engineering: 2000. Arlington, VA (NSF 00-327~. Nyquist, J. (2002, November-December). "The Ph.D.: A Tapestry of Change for the 21st Cen- tury." Change, 34~6~: 13-20. Reskin, B., and Roos, P. (1990~. Job Queues, Gender Queues. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Schuster, J. (1990~. "Faculty Issues in the 1990s: New Realities, New Opportunities." In L.W. Jones and F.A. Nowotny (eds.), An Agenda for the New Decade. New Directions for Higher Education, no. 70. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Smith, D. (1989~. The Challenge of Diversity: Involvement or Alienation in the Academy. ASHE- ERIC Higher Education Report no. 5. Washington, DC: George Washington University School of Education and Human Development. Turner, C., and Myers, S., Jr. (2000~. Faculty of Color in Academe: Bittersweet Success. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

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Each of 32 nonprofit organizations contributing a presentation to the Pan-Organizational Summit on the Science and Engineering Workforce (November 11-12, 2002; The National Academies, Washington, DC) was invited to issue a corresponding position paper to be reproduced in this volume. The bulk of this report comprises these papers. In addition, Shirley Jackson and Joseph Toole, two of the keynote speakers, have included their remarks.

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