Black Female Emerging-Scholar Early-Career Professional Development: Issues of Socialization and Transition

• In Event: Black Women Faculty: Stories of Trial and Triumph, Recommendations for Change

Abstract

Researchers have long identified the factors that contribute to academic and professional success in the academy (i.e. dissertation completion; clear, consistent promotion and tenure criteria) and have examined these factors in many institutional and gendered contexts. Evidence suggests emerging scholars, graduate students and new faculty, often have not received proper prior training to become productive faculty members (Ortlieb, Biddix, & Doepker, 2010). Socialization is an important factor in the academic and professional transition of emerging scholars. Often socialization activities focus only on discipline-based knowledge and common skills required for academic and professional success. Unfortunately, inadequate socialization results in added difficulties for emerging scholars, and the graduate students they advise. In addition to the already challenging transition from graduate student to professor, Black faculty often also experience isolation and alienation in departments (Johnsrud & DesJarlais, 1994; Phelps, 1995). For Black female faculty race coupled with gender issues creates an even more challenging experience (Johnson-Bailey & Cervero, 2008). Empirical evidence regarding factors that facilitate female academicians’ success, and Black females’ success specifically, does not exist. Increasing the number and percentage of Black female faculty, as well as improving the subsequent success of these faculty provides more underrepresented faculty role models that assist in attracting and graduating doctoral students of color and socializing these students to life in the academy.

This mixed methods study investigates Black female emerging scholars’ perceptions of early career professional development experiences and the impact on their successful professional transition. The purpose of this research is to re-examine current issues for Black female emerging scholars, identify steps that contribute to their socialization, and provide recommendations to ease transition.

Tillman (2001) identified three primary factors that present roadblocks for Black females’ successful promotion and tenure: (a) lack of meaningful mentoring, (b) lack of socialization to faculty life, and (c) inability to articulate a viable and sustainable research agenda. The Sisters of the Academy Institute Research BootCamp is an early career professional development activity intended to address the roadblocks Tillman identified. The biennial Research BootCamp is an intensive weeklong experience designed to assist advanced graduate students develop dissertation research and junior faculty prepare peer-reviewed journal manuscript preparation.

Participants in this study are Black female junior faculty and doctoral students. All participants participated in the 2005-2009 Research BootCamps. Data from a 2011 follow-up survey offers participant perceptions of the program’s impact on their academic and professional transition. Results from the survey are enriched by semi-structured interviews that provided more in-depth discussion of their transition experiences. Descriptive analyses, including basic cross-tabulations and regression analyses to test associations between perceptions of the professional development’s effects and academic and professional outcomes were conducted.

Preliminary findings indicate the demystification of the dissertation/publication process, along with developing a network of Black female scholars as most important aspects of their early career professional transition. Findings from this study will help identify the most salient features of socialization and transition, and generate a conceptual framework of early career experiences and ultimate academic and professional success.

Authors

• Tamara Bertrand Jones, Florida State University

• Anna L. Green, Atlanta Metropolitan College