Postdocs of Colors Racialized Agency Toward Tenure-Track Careers (Poster 3)

• In Event: Friday Poster Session 3:05 pm

Abstract

We used Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations to analyze 15 interviews with faculty of color to understand how they perceived race impacted their postdoctoral experience in preparing for tenure-track careers. We found that whiteness, through unspoken norms of likability and ideal worker norms, filtered how postdocs of color understood and enacted their agency. We also found that postdoctoral supervisors played significant roles in whether postdocs of color felt that their agency was constrained or empowered as they developed their scholarly identities in preparation for tenure-track faculty careers. We offer implications for postdoctoral supervisors and leaders charged with postdoctoral positions to create experiences that empower postdocs of color to enact their agency in humanistic ways.

Authors

• Guillermo Ortega, Texas Tech University

• Román Liera, Montclair State University