Anthony Lising Antonio

Faculty of Color Reconsidered: Reassessing Contributions to Scholarship

The status of faculty of color (1) has been of concern to many in American higher education since the 1960s. The consciousness provided by the Civil Rights movement of that decade led to efforts to diversify higher education at all levels, from the student body to the faculty ranks. In the proceeding decades, we have witnessed steady growth in the racial and ethnic diversity of the college student population, and recent trends illustrate unprecedented rates of growth. At the University of California, for example, just 70% of all undergraduates were white in 1984, and six years later this proportion had dropped further to less than 60% (University of California, 1991). Nationwide, college enrollments are currently 11.0% African American, 8.7% Latino, 6.1% Asian American, 1.0% American Indian, and 73.1% white (2) (Snyder & Hoffman, 2000). Similar trends of diversification among college faculty, unfortunately, have not materialized. For example, in 1983 whites still composed approximately 91% of all full-time fa culty. Ten years later the representation of white faculty had decreased by just 3 percentage points, to 88% (Carter & Wilson, 1997). The slow progress being made by higher education to diversify its faculty has been widely recognized, and much research and debate have been focused on the factors that may be stifling efforts for increasing minority representation. These factors include: a small and decreasing pool of minority PhDs (Jackson, 1991; Mickelson & Oliver, 1991; Solmon & Wingard, 1991; Turner, Myers, Jr., & Creswell, 1999; Washington & Harvey, 1989); disproportionate tenure rates and rates of pretenure departure (Finkelstein, 1984; Menges & Exum, 1983); the persistence of racist perceptions on institutional and individual levels that restrict access and impede the professional progress of faculty of color (de la Luz Reyes & Halcon, 1991; Harvey & Scott-Jones, 1985; Jackson, 1991; Turner & Myers, Jr., 2000); the devaluation of the qualifications of minority PhDs not trained in the most elite, prestigious colleges (Mickelson & Oliver, 1991); and the difficulties of surviving in a predominantly white academy due to poor mentoring, di sproportionate advising and service loads stemming from frequently being the only faculty of color in a department, an isolating work environment, and the lack of scholarly recognition given to research focusing on ethnic minority populations (de la Luz Reyes & Halcon, 1991; Frierson, 1990; Garza, 1988; Tack & Patitu, 1992; Turner & Myers, Jr., 2000; Turner, Myers, Jr., & Creswell, 1999; Washington & Harvey, 1989). Unlike these issues of recruitment and retention, which primarily focus on barriers and obstacles to faculty diversity, the value of faculty of color to higher education has not been subject to the same volume of research and debate. How do faculty of color uniquely contribute to the enterprise of American higher education? Some scholars contend that faculty of color are essential for higher education, because they provide students with diverse role models, assist in providing more effective mentoring to minority students, are supportive of minority-related and other areas of nontraditional areas of scholarship, and give minorities a greater voice in the governance of the nations colleges and universities (de la Luz Reyes & Halcon, 1991; Green, 1989; Mickelson & Oliver, 1991; Washington & Harvey, 1989). Others view the full representation and participation of faculty of color in the academy as essential to creating diverse and pluralistic colleges and universities (Green, 1989; Turner & Myers, Jr., 2000). Wh ile contributions to mentoring, role modeling, and governance are important to note and document, continued slow growth in the proportional representation of faculty of color in an era witnessing the dismantling of race-based affirmative action in higher education suggests that their contributions need to be reconsidered from a new perspective. …

Community Service in Higher Education: A Look at the Nation's Faculty

Motivated by increasing attention to citizenship development in American higher education, this exploratory study examines the level of involvement in and commitment to community service among higher education faculty. Although most report performing some form of community or volunteer service, women, non-White, and lower-ranking faculty tend to be the most involved. The personal values of altruism, service, and community orientation appear to be the primary determinants of commitment to this type of activity.

When Does Race Matter in College Friendships? Exploring Men's Diverse and Homogeneous Friendship Groups

This qualitative study explores how male students from different racial backgrounds experience racial diversity within racially diverse or homogeneous friendship groups. Based on an inductive analysis of purposive interviews, the author found that diverse friendships among men may result from both an attitude of intentionality with regard to diversity as well as a complete dismissal of difference. Similarly, racial homogeneity among friends is not always intentional, nor does it necessarily lead to racial isolation.

Rethinking Research on the Impact of Racial Diversity in Higher Education.

While the court-approved use of race in college admissions rests on the ability of institutions to produce educational benefits associated with diversity, existing research provides little practical insight for institutions, particularly with regard to the types of relations that foster such benefits. The authors review current research and conceptualizations in the study of racial diversity, revealing incomplete theories of socialization, unspecified mechanisms, and problematic assumptions. Using Gurin (1999) as a starting point, the authors propose a new framework and research agenda for examining the impact of racial diversity on students, integrating insights from network theory, social psychology, and sociology.

Faculty of Color Reconsidered

The status of faculty of color! has been of concern to many in American higher education since the 1960s. The consciousness provided by the Civil Rights movement of that decade led to efforts to diversify higher education at all levels, from the student body to the faculty ranks. In the proceeding decades, we have witnessed steady growth in the racial and ethnic diversity of the college student population, and recent trends illustrate unprecedented rates of growth. At the University of California, for example, just 70% of all undergraduates were white in 1984, and six years later this proportion had dropped further to less than 60% (University of California, 1991). Nationwide, college enrollments are currently 11.0% African American, 8.7% Latino, 6.1% Asian American, 1.0% American Indian, and 73.1 % white? (Snyder & Hoffman, 2000). Similar trends of diversification among college faculty, unfortunately, have not materialized. For example, in 1983 whites still composed approximately 91 % of all full-time faculty. Ten years later the representation of white faculty had decreased by just 3 percentage points, to 88% (Carter & Wilson, 1997). The slow progress being made by higher education to diversify its faculty has been widely recognized, and much research and debate have

Lessons learned from a data-driven college access program: The National College Advising Corps.

This chapter discusses the collaboration between a national college access program, the National College Advising Corps (NCAC), and its research and evaluation team at Stanford University. NCAC is currently active in almost four hundred high schools and through the placement of a recent college graduate to serve as a college adviser provides necessary information and support for students who may find it difficult to navigate the complex college admission process. The advisers also conduct outreach to underclassmen in an effort to improve the school-wide college-going culture. Analyses include examination of both quantitative and qualitative data from numerous sources and partners with every level of the organization from the national office to individual high schools. The authors discuss balancing the pursuit of evaluation goals with academic scholarship. In an effort to benefit other programs seeking to form successful data-driven interventions, the authors provide explicit examples of the partnership and present several examples of how the program has benefited from the data gathered by the evaluation team.

Studying the career pathways of engineers: An illustration with two data sets

Introduction While calls for the strengthening of U.S. education once again surface in the name of global competitiveness, a primary issue facing engineering education is retention in the profession. As Lowell and Salzman (2007) have argued, the demand for engineers and scientists remains strong and the overall production of engineers and scientists appears more than adequate. The troubling trend over the last two decades, however, is that the highest performing students and graduates are leaving science and engineering pathways at higher rates than are their lower performing peers (Lowell, Salzman, Bernstein, & Henderson, 2009). This finding is significant for engineering education as it identifies an important direction for research in this area. Based on their study of pathways through and beyond college, Lowell et al. (2009) conclude that “students are not leaving STEM pathways because of lack of preparation or ability” and that research efforts should turn to “factors other than educational preparation or student ability in this compositional shift to lower-performing students in the STEM pipeline” (p. iii). Our understanding of the aforementioned shift is limited even while the study of engineering career pathways began as early as the late 1970s with the work of LeBold, Bond, and Thomas (1977) on black engineers at Purdue University. Although the literature on engineering education and the profession has proliferated since that time, relatively few studies have looked carefully at the career decisions of engineering graduates. For instance, much of the work on engineering career pathways simply accounts for the numbers of engineers at different points in the pathway to quantify attrition points and rates (e.g., Bradburn, Nevill, Forrest, Cataldi, & Perry, 2006; Choy, Bradburn, & Carroll, 2008; Forrest Cataldi et al., 2011; Frehill, 2007a; Reese, 2003; Regets, 2006) and provides little information on differential pathways or the factors which influence these pathways. More recent work investigates aspects of early career engineers that reflect a focus beyond educational preparation and training and academic and technical ability (e.g., Fouad & Singh, 2011; Ro, 2011), but a thorough review reveals a collection of data sets and studies that remain incomplete for comprehensively understanding the early career pathways of engineers.

Approaching Diversity Work in the University: Lessons from an American Context

Racial and ethnic diversity and the attendant challenges and benefits of multiculturalism in society are a worldwide phenomenon. As higher education is often the training ground for future social and political leaders, as well as the primary institution charged with the study of social problems, the educational benefits, and challenges of diversity in society are particularly relevant to institutions of higher learning. This chapter synthesizes the ongoing empirical research on the educational impact of racially and ethnically diverse university environments in a U.S. context and offers a framework of institutional practices based on that work to help administrators both respond to challenges and better harness-related benefits for all students.