2008 Woodie Awards
Efforts made to expand faculty diversity
Benjamin Pomerance
Issue date: 10/10/08 Section: News
Originally published: 10/9/08 at 7:33 PM EST
Last update: 10/10/08 at 7:29 AM EST
The solution involves minorities.
The problem affects the majority.
And colleges across America, according to a Sept. 26 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, are struggling to figure it out.
In a front-page story, Chronicle writer Ben Gose examined a decade-old quest for colleges to recruit more faculty members from minority groups to their campuses. American institutions of higher education, Gose wrote, are making plans and even setting numerical goals for hiring a more diverse faculty body. Yet while many colleges have set ambitious plans, data shows the majority of institutions are falling short of their self-imposed objectives.
According to Gose's article, the most recent (2005) U.S. Education Deptartment survey indicates only 16.5 percent of the nation's full-time professors were from minority groups. Many colleges that were successful in hiring a higher percentage of minorities failed to retain them, Gose continued, with colleges unable to fit their new faculty members into tenure-track situations.
Yet if the best laid plans of higher education have often gone astray, Plattsburgh State Foreign Languages and Literature Chair Jean Ouedraogo believes it hasn't been for a lack of trying.
"I think this campus has made a commitment to furthering diversity in education," Ouedraogo said of PSUC. "But it hasn't always worked, mostly because there are a number of factors that are not working in our favor."
Ouedraogo, an African-American born in the West African nation of Burkina Faso, said he has never felt out of place as an ethnic minority at PSUC. In fact, he said, the exact opposite is true, as faculty members have often helped him feel comfortable on the campus.
"I have found that this is a place where you can thrive if you put your heart into it," Ouedraogo said. "The setup here works the way it is designed to work, and I think it works well."
Treatment of minority faculty on campus is not the issue, Ouedraogo said. The real problem, he added, arises when trying to attract minority scholars to PSUC in the first place.
The problem affects the majority.
And colleges across America, according to a Sept. 26 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, are struggling to figure it out.
In a front-page story, Chronicle writer Ben Gose examined a decade-old quest for colleges to recruit more faculty members from minority groups to their campuses. American institutions of higher education, Gose wrote, are making plans and even setting numerical goals for hiring a more diverse faculty body. Yet while many colleges have set ambitious plans, data shows the majority of institutions are falling short of their self-imposed objectives.
According to Gose's article, the most recent (2005) U.S. Education Deptartment survey indicates only 16.5 percent of the nation's full-time professors were from minority groups. Many colleges that were successful in hiring a higher percentage of minorities failed to retain them, Gose continued, with colleges unable to fit their new faculty members into tenure-track situations.
Yet if the best laid plans of higher education have often gone astray, Plattsburgh State Foreign Languages and Literature Chair Jean Ouedraogo believes it hasn't been for a lack of trying.
"I think this campus has made a commitment to furthering diversity in education," Ouedraogo said of PSUC. "But it hasn't always worked, mostly because there are a number of factors that are not working in our favor."
Ouedraogo, an African-American born in the West African nation of Burkina Faso, said he has never felt out of place as an ethnic minority at PSUC. In fact, he said, the exact opposite is true, as faculty members have often helped him feel comfortable on the campus.
"I have found that this is a place where you can thrive if you put your heart into it," Ouedraogo said. "The setup here works the way it is designed to work, and I think it works well."
Treatment of minority faculty on campus is not the issue, Ouedraogo said. The real problem, he added, arises when trying to attract minority scholars to PSUC in the first place.
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