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1. Cultivating change: an evaluation of departmental readiness for faculty diversification

   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1553580  

   Carter-Veale, Wendy Y; Cresiski, Robin H; Sharp, Gwen; Lankford, Jordan D; Ugarte, Fadel (February 2025, Frontiers in Education)

   Rana, Karan Singh (Ed.)

   Despite the increasing number of racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) individuals earning PhDs and the substantial investment in diversity initiatives within higher education, the relative lack of diversity among faculty in tenure-track positions reveals a persistent systemic challenge. This study used an adaptation of the Community Readiness Tool to evaluate readiness for faculty diversification efforts in five biomedical departments. Interviews with 31 key informants were transcribed and coded manually and using NVIVO 12 in order to assign scores to each department in the six domains of readiness. The results revealed no meaningful differences in overall scores across institutional types, but did show differences within specific domains of readiness. These findings indicate that readiness is multi-faceted and academic departments can benefit by identifying priority areas in need of additional faculty buy-in and resources to enhance the success of diversification efforts. 

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2. Changing an Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Culture from the Bottom Up: Action Plans Generated from Faculty Interviews

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34273  

   Frickey, Elise; Rover, Diane; Zambreno, Joseph; Khokhar, Ashfaq; Jacobson, Douglas; Larson, Lisa; Shelley, Mack (June 2020, 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   Changing Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Culture from the Bottom Up: Action Plans Generated from Faculty Interviews We prefer a Lessons Learned Paper. In a collaborative effort between a RED: Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) National Science Foundation grant awarded to an electrical and computer engineering department (ECpE) and a broader, university-wide ADVANCE program, ECpE faculty were invited to participate in focus groups to evaluate the culture of their department, to further department goals, and to facilitate long-term planning. Forty-four ECpE faculty members from a large Midwestern university participated in these interviews, which were specifically focused on departmental support and challenges, distribution of resources, faculty workload, career/family balance, mentoring, faculty professional development, productivity, recruitment, and diversity. Faculty were interviewed in groups according to rank, and issues important to particular subcategories of faculty (e.g., rank, gender, etc.) were noted. Data were analyzed by a social scientist using the full transcript of each interview/focus group and the NVivo 12 Qualitative Research Software Program. She presented the written report to the entire faculty. Based on the results of the focus groups, the ECpE department developed an action plan with six main thrusts for improving departmental culture and encouraging departmental change and transformation. 1. Department Interactions – Encourage open dialogue and consider department retreats. Academic areas should be held accountable for the working environment and encouraged to discuss department-related issues. 2. Mentoring, Promotion, and Evaluation – Continue mentoring junior faculty. Improve the clarity of P&T operational documents and seek faculty input on the evaluation system. 3. Teaching Loads – Investigate teaching assistant (TA) allocation models and explore models for teaching loads. Develop a TA performance evaluation system and return TA support to levels seen in the 2010 timeframe. Improvements to teaching evaluations should consider differential workloads, clarifying expectations for senior advising, and hiring more faculty for undergraduate-heavy areas. 4. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – Enact an explicit focus on diversity in hiring. Review departmental policies on inclusive teaching and learning environments. 5. Building – Communicate with upper administration about the need for a new building. Explore possibilities for collaborations with Computer Science on a joint building. 6. Support Staff – Increase communication with the department regarding new service delivery models. Request additional support for Human Resources, communications, and finance. Recognize staff excellence at the annual department banquet and through college/university awards. 

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3. How do departments support their underrepresented minority doctoral students? Are they doing enough?

   Brent, R; Schimmel, KA; Gumpertz, M. (January 2021, CoNECD - Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity - Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   A major barrier to increasing the percentage of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in STEM fields is the small number of URM applicants for academic positions. One factor contributing to this situation is that the two-year attrition rate of URM doctoral students is nearly 50%, substantially greater than the rate for non-URM students at most institutions. Many efforts have been made to decrease the attrition, most involving direct work with doctoral students and others concentrating on institutional changes such naming a high-level administrator to coordinate recruitment and retention efforts. Often lacking in these efforts are attempts to change faculty attitudes and practices that negatively affect student retention. Three public universities including one HBCU are currently carrying out a five-year project to develop and pilot-test a department-level process to fill this gap. Why the focus on the department level? Since URM students spend most of their time in their departments as they take classes, attend seminars, conduct research, and interact informally with department faculty, staff, and other graduate students, the climate they experience and the support they receive can have a major impact on their success. In addition, changes in a department can last well beyond the end of a grant. When interventions address students directly, once they graduate there may be no lasting change in the department. When faculty attitudes and mentoring practices change, on the other hand, the changes may last and continue to help students succeed long after the grant expires. The project seeks to help department faculty increase their understanding of the issues facing underrepresented minorities in doctoral programs, identify and remedy the departmental practices that may be hindering URM student success, and examine and improve their own mentoring practices. In the project, six cohorts of faculty members and both URM and non-URM doctoral students—two cohorts at each participating university—will be assembled and surveyed. The faculty members will be asked how their departments address recruitment and retention of URM students, how they personally support and mentor their URM students, and how welcoming and supportive of URM students they perceive their department to be. The students will be asked to express their level of satisfaction with their coursework and their relationships with faculty and other graduate students, describe the learning opportunities and mentoring they have received, and discuss how welcoming and supportive of URM students their departments have been. To initiate the gathering of baseline information, the first cohort—79 faculty members, 16 URM students, and 94 non-URM students from six STEM departments at one of the universities—was surveyed. This presentation will report and discuss the results. 

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4. How do departments support their underrepresented minority doctoral students? Are they doing enough?

   Brent, R; Schimmel, KA; Gumpertz, M. (January 2021, CoNECD - Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity - Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   A major barrier to increasing the percentage of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in STEM fields is the small number of URM applicants for academic positions. One factor contributing to this situation is that the two-year attrition rate of URM doctoral students is nearly 50%, substantially greater than the rate for non-URM students at most institutions. Many efforts have been made to decrease the attrition, most involving direct work with doctoral students and others concentrating on institutional changes such naming a high-level administrator to coordinate recruitment and retention efforts. Often lacking in these efforts are attempts to change faculty attitudes and practices that negatively affect student retention. Three public universities including one HBCU are currently carrying out a five-year project to develop and pilot-test a department-level process to fill this gap. Why the focus on the department level? Since URM students spend most of their time in their departments as they take classes, attend seminars, conduct research, and interact informally with department faculty, staff, and other graduate students, the climate they experience and the support they receive can have a major impact on their success. In addition, changes in a department can last well beyond the end of a grant. When interventions address students directly, once they graduate there may be no lasting change in the department. When faculty attitudes and mentoring practices change, on the other hand, the changes may last and continue to help students succeed long after the grant expires. The project seeks to help department faculty increase their understanding of the issues facing underrepresented minorities in doctoral programs, identify and remedy the departmental practices that may be hindering URM student success, and examine and improve their own mentoring practices. In the project, six cohorts of faculty members and both URM and non-URM doctoral students—two cohorts at each participating university—will be assembled and surveyed. The faculty members will be asked how their departments address recruitment and retention of URM students, how they personally support and mentor their URM students, and how welcoming and supportive of URM students they perceive their department to be. The students will be asked to express their level of satisfaction with their coursework and their relationships with faculty and other graduate students, describe the learning opportunities and mentoring they have received, and discuss how welcoming and supportive of URM students their departments have been. To initiate the gathering of baseline information, the first cohort—79 faculty members, 16 URM students, and 94 non-URM students from six STEM departments at one of the universities—was surveyed. This presentation will report and discuss the results. 

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5. How the Demographic Composition of Academic Science and Engineering Departments Influences Workplace Culture, Faculty Experience, and Retention Risk

   Griffith, Eric. E; Dasgupta, Nilanjana (January 2018, Social sciences)

   Although on average women are underrepresented in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments at universities, an under appreciated fact is that women’s representation varies widely across STEM disciplines. Past research is fairly silent on how local variations in gender composition impact faculty experiences. This study fills that gap. A survey of STEM departments at a large research university finds that women faculty in STEM are less professionally satisfied than male colleagues only if they are housed in departments where women are a small numeric minority. Gender differences in satisfaction are largest in departments with less than 25% women, smaller in departments with 25–35% women, and nonexistent in departments approaching 50% women. Gender differences in professional satisfaction in gender-unbalanced departments are mediated by women’s perception that their department’s climate is uncollegial, faculty governance is non-transparent, and gender relations are inequitable. Unfavorable department climates also predict retention risk for women in departments with few women, but not in departments closer to gender parity. Finally, faculty who find within-department mentors to be useful are more likely to have a favorable view of their department’s climate, which consequently predicts more professional satisfaction. Faculty gender and gender composition does not moderate these findings, suggesting that mentoring is equally effective for all faculty. Keywords: gender; STEM; climate; retention; faculty 

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