Professors offer suggestions to improve minority retention rate

Tufts continues to have problems retaining minority and female faculty, despite recent efforts from the University's Office of Diversity Education and Development and other departments.

Results from an extensive survey on the issue by the Kaleidoscope Group, a women and minority-owned consulting firm, are expected by late March or early April. The study was commissioned after interviews conducted with minority faculty during the summer showed a need for more qualitative evidence behind the lagging retention rate.

University officials have expressed the importance of having a faculty that is representative of the student body it teaches. "An excellent faculty and an excellent student body go hand-in-hand," Dean of Arts & Sciences Susan Ernst said in a statement. "One of the characteristics of an excellent faculty is that it is a diverse faculty."

Many professors suggested creating a safer community in order to improve minority retention rates. "There are so many factors why the rate is lower; there's just not one reason," Child Development Professor Calvin Gidney said. "However, there might be things we can do, including improving the workplace climate."

Professor of Political Science and former Dean of the Colleges Marilyn Glater also said that Tufts needs to work on "creating a welcoming environment" for all staff members. Community comes from all people present on campus, "from the undergraduates to the administration," she said.

Even though Tufts retains minority professors at a rate comparable to other schools, staff members are often lured away to larger schools, Associate Professor of History Richard Gill said. Bigger research-based institutions have a higher number of minority faculty members and a greater sense of community, according to Gill.

The University already has several programs in place that attempt to provide a comfortable environment for minority and female staff members. The Office of Diversity Education and Development was established in 1998 in an effort to build a safe, diverse community as per a recommendation by the Task Force on Race. To that end, the Office has been holding workshops, programs, and meetings to improve student and faculty inter-race relations.

"People talk to us about teaching in the classroom and any other issue they wish to come and speak about," the office's director, Margery Davies, said.

The University currently requires each department to have one staff meeting a year devoted exclusively to diversity-related issues, and administrators recently issued a reminder to all department chairs because there was some concern that the meetings were not taking place.

"There are big differences between different departments in the school, Gidney said. "They differ in how far along in the discussion they go."

Many staff members agreed that certain departments have better interracial relations than others, despite the University-wide rules. "The assumption is all faculty members are the same, but this simply isn't true if you are the first or only minority member of color in that department," Gill said.

Many faculty members have spoken of the need for a "support structure" to keep professors at the University during the difficult pre-tenure period. Tenure-track professors face six years of relatively low pay and workweeks that are sometimes longer than 70 hours.

One solution might be a mentoring program between tenured and new faculty of the same minority group, Gidney said, which would attempt to create a strong relationship between the two professors.

The proposed mentoring program may not be feasible, however, given the limited number of minority professors. Linking professors across departments may allow more of these partnerships to be formed, however. "Mentoring is a tricky thing," Glater said. "Some of the studies suggest it is more beneficial have someone in the same department, others say there should be some distance."

Other professors think that the mentoring program might offer unique opportunities for new minority professors. "There might be some merit to a mentoring program," Gill said. "An African American professor in history might be able to provide some insight to a tenure-track physics professor on being a minority on campus, but not on how to navigate through the department."

"We need to realize that supporting faculty means different things for different people, and that no one is going to need exactly the same services," Gidney said.

Previous surveys and studies commissioned by individual departments have shown significant gaps between the retention rates of minority and female faculty and the overall rate. One such study, which examined the period between 1991 and 1996, found that 64 percent of male faculty was still employed after five years, compared to 42 percent of women and 38 percent of minorities.

The Kaleidoscope Group survey is designed to discover exactly what factors have motivated faculty members to leave the University in the past. According to Kaleidoscope's website, "Organizations must acknowledge resistance and transform it into energy and motivation around the issues of inclusion and diversity."

The group has completed the interviews of several faculty members and is drafting its final report, according to Ernst. Originally due by the end of the fall semester, the Kaleidoscope Group will issue its report within the next several months, which will outline factors to improve the lagging retention rates.