A recently released study slams Tufts' minority and female faculty retention rates, with some female faculty calling Tufts' tenure system "humiliating."
The report was completed nearly a year ago, but the school did not release the results until now.
Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences Susan Ernst said the year-long delay was partly due to the fact that Dean of the School of Engineering Linda Abriola was out of town . "We wanted to make sure that [Abriola] said it was fine before we sent it out," Ernst said.
The Tufts administration had previously conducted its own quantitative study of retention rates. Its most startling statistic revealed that as of November 2002, Tufts' retention rate of African-American female faculty was 0 percent. The group with the highest retention rate was the Caucasian male population, at 70 percent.
The Kaleidoscope Group, an outside consulting firm, conducted an assessment survey for the retention of faculty between 1990-1991 through 1995-1996. The earlier Tufts survey found the statistics, and the Kaleidoscope Group performed the interviews.
Retention rates for the other groups were: Asian-American men, 40 percent; Asian-American women, 50 percent; African-American men, 40
percent; Hispanic men, 25 percent, Hispanic women, 50 percent; and Caucasian women, 42 percent.
The disparity between Caucasian faculty retention and minority retention is significant. While the overall retention rate for Caucasian faculty was 57 percent, faculty of color boasts only 35 percent retention.
Within the faculty, men continue to hold a higher overall retention rate over women. Men have a 59 percent rate (44 hired between 1991 and 1996, 26 are still at Tufts), while women have a 39 percent retention rate (38 hired between 1991 and 1996, 15 are still at Tufts).
Through additional interviews, the Kaleidoscope Group found and categorized faculty's concerns on a broad range of issues. Women and African-American faculty were especially vocal in terms of problems they face at Tufts.
Chief among those worries was the feeling that "the tenure system [at Tufts] has been humiliating for some women." The report said that "this issue was voiced in all segments of the faculty population," and that "some women felt there was gender bias involved" because "pregnancy and maternity leave have been considered as barriers to tenure."
Furthermore, female faculty members interviewed noted that they are not seen as equal to men and therefore not as valued.
The report stated that "Engineering was specifically mentioned because the loss of female junior faculty seemed severe. More than five other departments outside of Engineering came under criticism for the lack of support or demeaning behavior by department heads or the Administration."
African-American faculty nearly uniformly claimed that finding appropriate housing in the Boston area continues to remain a problem for them. The report stated that "uniquely for African-Americans, there is a historical component regarding Boston's lack of acceptance or tolerance for African-Americans. This creates a negative image of the area as African-Americans are invited to join the Tufts faculty."
Participation rates among the faculty, however, were low for some demographics. Of the 74 faculty members initially contacted to partake in the process, only 38 of the faculty accepted an interview. Ultimately, 65 percent of minority faculty declined interviews.
A memo from Ernst, among others, said, "these response rates [were] disappointing."
Geology Professor Anne Gardulski, who served on the 1996 Tufts' Task Force on Race, could not pinpoint a reason that response rates were so low. "This is something that we would like to know ourselves," Gardulski said.
History professor Gerald Gill - who was also a member of the Task Force on Race, as well as the Oversight Committee and the Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Retention - attributed the low response rates to outside factors.
"Some of the people Kaleidoscope sought to interview had already left Tufts. It's not a stretch to imagine that either they simply didn't want to discuss their time at Tufts, or they were just too busy with their other work," Gill said.
Gardulski said that "generally, this report provided no huge surprises. The points made in this report we already knew. It was, however, beneficial to hear them from an outside, disinterested group."
According to another memo from Ernst and other administrators, "the most heartening fact to come out of the report is that many of the problems described we have either been addressing or have become part of our strategic planning."
This includes the creation of faculty-only affordable housing, allowing tenure-track professors who are also parents to defer their tenure decisions by one year, and a stronger mentoring program.
Gardulski said that low retention rates could be attributed to several factors, including "a combination of a sometimes-hostile atmosphere in some departments and in the Boston area, and an incredible array of opportunities for minority faculty throughout the country."
She said that minority faculty is in extremely high demand, and that Tufts sometimes struggles to match other institutions' offers both in terms of salaries and teaching and research opportunities.
Ruben Salinas Stern, Director of the Latino Center at Tufts, said that actively assessing and evaluating the Kaleidoscope Group's report was "a very good beginning."
Stern also believes, however, that the most important step in increasing minority retention will be "what [the administration] will do with those results."
Although Stern said that he has yet to see the administration distribute a detailed plan to address these issues, the solution is largely common sense.
The solution "is a matter of welcoming faculty, mentoring people, making them feel welcome and comfortable at Tufts," he said.
Although the report has not been released in its entirety for privacy reasons, a thematic summary of the findings is being circulated among the faculty and, according to Ernst, should already be available on the Arts, Sciences and Engineering website (http://ase.tufts.edu).
