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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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,
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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.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
minority faculty
