Washington

Educators gathered for the workshop on promoting faculty diversity at the National Education Association: American Federation of Teachers (NEA-AFT) conference held in Washington last week, heard from higher education officials about not only achieving a racially diverse faculty, but achieving a diversity, which also includes women and people with disabilities.

Lezli Baskerville, president of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), said historically Black colleges and universities have a successful model to achieve a diverse professoriate.

Close to 48 percent of HBCU faculty come from diverse racial backgrounds, said Baskerville, adding that approximately 52 percent of the faculty at HBCUs are Black, 33 percent are White, 7 percent are Asian American and 3 percent are Hispanic.

Baskerville recommended putting pressure on state and federal legislatures to shift funding away from colleges and universities that are not giving priority to diversifying their faculties and allocating these funds to institutions, such as HBCUs, that have diverse faculties.

However, although HBCUs by their very nature have diverse student bodies and faculties, the pipeline to the professorship for women and minorities is not working, said Dr. Catherine Hill, director of research for the American Association of University Women.

Women, said Hill, have made significant headway over the past 40 years but they, like minorities, still face discrimination in the tenure process.

“What we found was that tenure seems to be a very important stumbling block,” she said.

Hill added that confidentiality in the evaluation process prohibits minorities from knowing how they are being evaluated for tenure and whether they are being treated fairly during the tenure process.

“There are times when some confidentiality is needed, but how do we balance that with the rights of individuals to know why they are not being promoted?” Hill asked.