Institutional Practices of Institutes of Higher Education: Minority Faculty Challenges for Hiring and Retention

• In Event: 16.048 - Breaking the Code: Developing a Mentorship Network for Minority Faculty in Academic Settings

Abstract

1. Objective: To describe IHEs’ hiring, retention, promotion and attrition challenges for minority faculty.

2. Theoretical Framework: Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) concerning the role of learning and development through observation and modeling.

3. Modes of Inquiry: Narrative inquiry - Connelly and Clandinin (1990) describes narrative inquiry in "education and educational research as the construction and reconstruction of personal and social stories" (p. 2). We drew from the tenets of narrative inquiry to inform our process and method.

4. Data Sources: Narratives, stories and reflections, and Literature Review

5. Point of View: The Hiring and promotion process:
The hiring process in IHEs involves an established process of recruitment and selection process that has investment of time resources, and good intentions. Austin, Sorcilenlli, and McDaniels (2007) explained that the expectation for the new faculty hire is that they will thrive at the institution (p.39). The successful hiring is just the beginning of the journey as the institutional leadership must provide support to ensure the new faculty will experience professional growth in the new setting and continue to thrive. Institutional practices in the IHE in the 21st century are very different from the previous century. During the hiring process, these institutions are expected to draw from national and international pool of applicants. Several universities have made efforts to implement specific hiring guidelines for search committees to ensure efforts to hire minority faculty. However, Turner and Myers (2000) identified one of the major causes attributed to the collapsed efforts to hire more diverse faculty as a lack of committed leadership from all level. The hiring process is initiated by a job posting, typically, the blind screening does not reveal explicit demographic information. During subsequent interviews and interactions, the search committee will determine who will be hired based on their perceptions of who was the best match to the job requirement and the school’s needs. New faculty is expected to acculturate into the institutional practices and to begin to meet expectations for scholarship, teaching and service. Faculty may perceive disparities in movement in rank or promotion and lack of support within the institution. Turner (2006) described several challenges minority faculty face including undervaluation of scholarship, reliance on minorities for committee participation without such contributions factoring into promotions, challenges to authority, and especially for women in academia, balancing academic life with familial and cmmunity responsibilities.


6. Scholarly Significance: Institutes of Higher Education (IHE) continue to struggle with recruitment and retention of minority faculty, especially women in academia (Turner, Viernes, & Myers, 2000; Wu, Thorsos, & Kern, 2016). There is a disparity between the percentages of men and women faculty with tenure (48.6% and 34.6% respectively) and the low rate (28%) of women faculty who advance in rank to full professors (Curtis, 2011). The importance of mentoring networks for minority faculty in supporting their successful advancement toward tenure, promotion and leadership has been well documented (Agosto et al., 2015; Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004; Bottoms et al., 2013; Esnard, et al. 2015; Unterreiner, Four-Babb, Kern, & Wu, 2015).

Authors

• Nilsa Thorsos, National University

• Sharon H. Ulanoff, California State University - Los Angeles