Talent-Centered Education Leadership: Designing Employee Experiences to Engage and Support Black and Hispanic Engineering Faculty

Introduction

According to data from 2018, Non-Hispanic Whites, despite being 60 percent of the general population (Pew Research Center, 2019), make up nearly 4/5 faculty at all ranks at degree-granting postsecondary institutions. Data from NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) (2020) suggests that among faculty of color, while Asian and Pacific Islanders represent 12 percent of faculty, Black and Hispanic faculty each only made up 6% respectively. It is important to note that as positions become more prestigious and/or more highly ranked, the underrepresentation is exacerbated. For instance, Black faculty represent 8% of Assistant Professors (typically tenure track but untenured) and Hispanic faculty represent 6% of this population. At the Associate Professor (typically tenured) level, that representation drops as Black faculty are at 6%, while Hispanic faculty are 5%. At the highest academic rank, Full Professorship, Black faculty make up only 4 percent and Hispanic faculty make up 3 percent. Moreover, at research intensive (R1) universities, the student and faculty makeup are considerably less diverse than those at less selective institutions. In fact, nearly 60% of new underrepresented faculty of color are hired as replacements for other underrepresented faculty who have left the institution (Moreno, et al., 2006; Whitaker, Montgomery, & Acosta, 2015), which consequently serves to maintain the underrepresentation.

While underrepresented in academia overall, Li and Koedel (2017) found that Blacks and Hispanics are particularly underrepresented in science, math, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Departments of engineering typically have very few, if any, Black and Hispanic faculty (Nelson & Brammer, 2010). Despite decades of ongoing efforts to reduce racial inequities in faculty representation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, Black and Hispanic Engineering Faculty (BHEF) remain critically underrepresented in higher education institutions (Li & Koedel, 2017). Colleges of Engineering and the departments within often have the most severe racial disparities on campus, frequently having no representation of BHEF at all (Nelson & Brammer, 2010). The underrepresentation is exacerbated at R1 institutions of higher education because of their competitive and prestige-oriented atmosphere.

Charleston, et al., (2014) argue that several theories (e.g., social stratification, social disparity theory, self-efficacy theory) attempt to explain persistent disparities in participation and representation in general higher education and in exclusionary fields like engineering, but the solutions remain elusive. Academic employers often attribute these disparities to “pipeline issues,” based on the argument that root primarily from the field’s inability to recruit and retain diverse students at various educational stages (e.g., at the undergraduate, masters and doctoral level), which leads to a limited pool of Black and Hispanic candidates for faculty positions. However, faculty turnover and attrition are increasingly recognized as playing a critical role in the underrepresentation of BHEF and has been recognized as a driver of the shortages faced by the industry (Whitaker, Montgomery, & Acosta, 2015). Even after being hired, underrepresented BHEF often endure the stigma of being treated as the token “diversity hire” (which results in the perception that they were hired based on their demographic characteristics and not their talent), have to constantly prove their own credibility, a lack of critical mass of others who look like them, suffer ongoing microaggression (i.e., daily experiences of racism and racial slights) and operate in a space where discussion of racism (and often the sharing of their own viewpoints) is discouraged (Genao et al., 2022; Mintah & Heykoop, 2022). Tran et al.’s (2021) review of the literature suggests that faculty of color often endure