(NAME-MCE) New Numbers on Underrepresented Faculty Members

[Anselmo Villanueva]

New Numbers on Underrepresented Faculty Members

Research on women and minorities in the sciences and social   sciences
examines the entire population of professors at top 100 departments in 15
fields.

Complete story below.  For related stories,  go to:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/01/minorities

For complete report, go to:

http://cheminfo.chem.ou.edu/faculty/djn/diversity/Faculty_Tables_FY07/07Report.pdf


November 1, 2007

New Numbers on Underrepresented Faculty Members

A new survey of the top 100 departments in 15 science and engineering
disciplines (including the social sciences) finds that "few science and
engineering departments have more than a single [underrepresented minority]
faculty member." Despite the increased representation of members of minority
groups among bachelor's and Ph.D. degree recipients, the analysis finds that
the proportion of black, Hispanic and Native American instructors generally
drops at every point in the academic pipeline, with the majority of minority
faculty members concentrated at the assistant professor level.

"A National Analysis of Minorities in Science and Engineering Faculties at
Research Universities," by Donna J. Nelson, an associate professor of
chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, differs from previous studies in
one key way. By surveying department chairs (and, in a limited number of
cases when data were not available through chairs, scanning departmental Web
sites and directories), Nelson collected information on the entire
population of tenured and tenure-track faculty at every top 100 department
in each of the 15 fields (as ranked by the National Science Foundation based
on research expenditures), as opposed to just a sample.

"In some cases there are zero people from underrepresented groups" at
particular faculty ranks in particular disciplines across all the
departments surveyed, Nelson said at a press briefing in Washington
Wednesday. Without the entire population represented, Nelson said, it would
be impossible to pinpoint some of those prominent zeros. Astronomy, for
instance, has no black or Native American assistant professors at any of the
top departments (40 departments in astronomy's case because NSF only ranks
the top 40 in the discipline). And there's not a single Native American
professor at any rank in astronomy or civil engineering.

Among the other results:

   - The proportion of underrepresented minorities — defined in the
   report as black, Hispanic and Native American — together made up
28.7percent of the
   U.S. population in 2006. But their representation among the faculty
   ranks at all levels in top departments in 2007 varied from 2.2 percent
   (astronomy) to 13.5 percent (sociology). Among the engineering
   disciplines, civil engineering, with 6.1 percent of the faculty
   identifying as members of the underrepresented minority groups, had the
   highest representation, and electrical engineering, with 3.3 percent,
   the lowest.
   - Only five of nine engineering and physical science disciplines
   increased their proportion of minority faculty from 2002 to 2007.
   - Nelson found a number of disparities between the number of minority
   Ph.D. recipients in the hiring pool and the racial distribution of
   assistant professors (the newly hired). In computer science, for instance,
   3.2 percent of Ph.D. recipients between 1996 and 2005 were black,
   while blacks made up 1.8 percent of assistant professors at top 100
   departments in 2007 (and 1.3 percent among the top 50).
   - Further up the ranks, the proportion of minorities tends to fall
   further. Among the top 50 departments, only three disciplines — chemistry,
   math and electrical engineering — had more minority associate rather than
   assistant professors. And none had a majority of their minority faculty at
   the full professor rank (Nelson writes that the opposite can be said for
   white males).
   - As for women, despite the fact that they make up more than 50
   percent of bachelor's degree recipients in fields like chemistry and
   political science, in those fields they represent, respectively, 13.7and
   26.1 percent of all professors at top 100 departments.

— Elizabeth Redden <elizabeth.redden at insidehighered.com>