Robert Sellers, PhD, the University of Michigan’s chief diversity officer, describes his institution’s implementation of a 5-year diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategic plan as an effort to build pathways for more diverse faculty, with a particular focus on elevating and making BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) scholarship and voices integral to the public university.
Along with other faculty recruiting efforts, the university has built a referral network that includes historically Black and Latinx universities to identify emerging BIPOC scholars, Sellers said. It has created the LSA Collegiate Fellows Programopens in new window to attract early career faculty who have demonstrated a commitment to diversity through teaching or research. University leaders are also building formal and informal mentorship networks to support BIPOC individuals as they navigate the stressors of the tenure process, as well as ensuring that their research and those of other BIPOC scholars are embedded into the curriculum, he said.
Mainstreaming these scholars’ work is crucial so “the BIPOC faculty don’t feel like they are exotic, or that the institution has done them a favor, when in fact their presence really enhances the quality of the education that the institution is providing,” said Sellers, also the university’s vice provost for equity and inclusion and the Charles D. Moody Collegiate Professor of Psychology.
The University of Michigan, which launched its first DEI strategic plan in 2016, is among those higher education institutions that have moved beyond talking points and token faculty hires amid the intensification of national discussions about racial justice and are improving the hiring of faculty of color among other inequities on U.S. campuses. Some universities, such as Johns Hopkinsopens in new window University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, have developed Target of Opportunity Programs, which incentivize departments to hire faculty from groups that have been underrepresented through various approaches, including by establishing a funding pool to recruit exceptional diverse scholars. Others are looking at strategies to better recognize research, service, and other work that enhances equity and inclusion. This spring, a partnership campus between Indiana University and Purdue University called IUPUI announced inclusion of that work into tenure-track evaluations. Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health announced in late 2020 that it would fund selected institutions to hire clusters of early career researchers from underrepresented groups through its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) program.
Despite such efforts, other recent news has highlighted that BIPOC faculty can encounter hurdles that don’t necessarily have to be cleared by their White peers. Earlier this year, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was criticized for recruiting Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and leader of the 1619 Project for The New York Times Magazine, but not offering her tenure. Moreover, building a deeper bench of diverse faculty will require more work than simply hiring more BIPOC scholars, said Jacqueline Bichsel, PhD, a psychologist and director of research at the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR).
People of color made up 18% of all psychology faculty positions for the 2020–21 academic year and nearly 25% across all disciplines, according to CUPA-HR data. But across the 5 years that the association has been collecting this data, a notable pattern persists—BIPOC representation declines as faculty move along the promotional track to full professor, Bichsel said.
For instance, 7.56% of assistant professors in psychology identified themselves as Black in 2020–21 versus 2.77% at the full professor level. Hispanics accounted for 6.81% of assistant professors and 3.82% of full professors. Asians hold 9.06% of assistant professor positions versus 4.18% for full. CUPA-HR data also show that female psychologists of all backgrounds, including White, are less likely to move up the ranks, Bichsel said.
“We are getting started off on the right foot, but something is happening in the promotion process that is discriminating against women and minorities,” she said. “This is continuing to occur. We are not going to solve this problem when all of the old White guys retire from their full professor positions.”
Beyond traditional hiring
Improving BIPOC representation among psychology faculty can benefit academic institutions in several ways, including by attracting a more diverse mix of students to the field, as well as to a specific institution, said A. Jordan Wright, PhD, a clinical associate professor at New York University and chair of APA’s Board of Educational Affairs (BEA). “Faculty of color often are the seats of research around diversity issues,” he said, noting that students tend to gravitate toward research that feels relevant. “And for many BIPOC students it is personally calling to see research on BIPOC issues and issues of marginalization and historically minoritized groups.”
This fall, a new BEA work group is taking a closer look at diversity and hiring practices in psychology, Wright said. The initial goal is to scan psychology and other fields for hiring initiatives and then develop a position statement likely outlining best practices, he said. “Although we are starting with psychology faculty, we want this to be able to be used by academia more broadly as well.”
Breaking into the faculty ranks, particularly a tenure-track position, has long proven to be not unlike gaining membership to an exclusive club in many disciplines. A 2015 analysis of nearly 19,000 faculty hiring decisions across business, computer science, and history found that only 25% of doctoral programs produced 71% to 86% of all tenure-track faculty (Science Advancesopens in new window, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2015).
To identify and recruit BIPOC faculty, it’s important to search well beyond traditional hiring networks, said Andrea Romero, PhD, vice provost for faculty affairs at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Along with posting on job boards for more targeted organizations, such as the National Latinx Psychological Association, or relevant APA divisions, she suggested attending conferences and other gatherings—virtually or in person—to meet early career BIPOC scholars.
When a job opens in your department, share the posting via email and social media, and encourage BIPOC scholars to apply, said Romero, also a professor of family studies and human development at the university. “If they do get the call and they are a finalist, they already have a better sense of your department,” she said. “They might be even more likely to say yes down the line.”
But that’s only part of the equation, Romero stressed, as institutions need to make sure that biases aren’t built into the search process itself. At the University of Arizona, which hires at least 200 faculty a year, all members of search committees must now complete an online training module in advance of each faculty search process, she said.
The training, which began there in 2019, provides committee members with “more awareness into how unconscious bias may influence reviews of candidates, discussions about candidates, and decisions about finalists,” Romero said. For each faculty position, the search committee must create a rubric with required qualifications in advance and then apply them to each candidate, Romero said, to counter various biases that may creep in.
One is the expediency bias—being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of applications and defaulting to a candidate with a degree from a high-profile institution, she said. Another is cloning shortcuts: “If we are only looking for people who are similar to us, then we are replicating the status quo over and over,” Romero said.
A faculty member’s record of published articles also influences tenure decisions, and the hurdles in publishing appear steeper for BIPOC researchers, according to a recent analysis studying research published in psychology journals and the racial/ethnic background of the editors (Perspectives on Psychological Scienceopens in new window, Vol. 15, No. 6, 2020). The study, based on an analysis of more than 26,000 articles published in top-tier psychology journals between 1974 and 2018, found that 83% of the 60 editors in chief during that stretch were White, while only 5% were BIPOC. (Among the remainder, researchers couldn’t identify race for various reasons, such as no available image.) During that same time period, only 5% of studies in those journals highlighted race.
Along with the work group studying diversity in hiring practices, APA has recently organized several other groups to tackle racial and ethnic inequities in academia. They include the Task Force on Inequities in Academic Tenure and Promotion, a nine-member group selected in late summer 2021 who will develop guidance to address systemic inequities that affect the processes and outcomes of academic promotion and tenure. Another task force, which includes representatives from APA’s Board of Scientific Affairs (BSA), Publications and Communications Board, and Council of Editors, is examining equity and diversity across the publications process. Among its priorities, the task force will publish demographic data that provide information and a mechanism for accountability related to improvement in the diversity of reviewers, editorial boards, and editors of APA journals and associated publications, according to BSA Chair Allyson Bennett, PhD.
Staying on track
For Della Mosley, PhD, landing a tenure-track position was the culmination of a long-held dream. The counseling psychologist was already an activist and a researcher focused on strategies to facilitate the wellness of Black and/or queer and transgender people of color when the University of Florida in Gainesville hired her in 2018 as an assistant professor in the psychology department. But following the murders of George Floyd and other Black people, and related racial protests, Mosley wanted to do more to support her academic brethren.
In 2020, Mosley and Pearis L. Bellamy, a University of Florida doctoral student, cofounded Academics for Black Survival and Wellnessopens in new window, a group comprising Black counseling psychologists and colleagues of all racial and ethnic backgrounds committed to disrupting anti-Black racism both within and outside academia. Since then, they’ve held anti-racism training events and organized related groups, including sessions focusing on Black wellness. In these conversations, Black faculty members and students have recounted some common stressors and challenges in academia, Mosley said.
They described not only dealing with microaggressions or outright racism but feeling like there wasn’t any accountability when they took their concerns to someone else, whether that was a colleague, department chair, or human resources, Mosley said. “And then nothing happened.”
They also talked about the lack of meaningful institutional support and having to figure things out on their own. “Having to build and find the networks to support their research, to support their teaching on their own, and that being an exhausting process,” Mosley said. “They had a lot of trial and error where they felt like maybe their White colleagues might not have to go through so much to get that support.”
It’s not that BIPOC faculty don’t have access to the same grant writing workshops and other resources as their White colleagues, Mosley said. But when they do show up, she said, the risk is that “they don’t feel welcome, invited, experience microaggressions in the space, and so they don’t want to return.”
Another common theme, Mosley said: battling the exhaustion and burnout that comes from being one of the few faculty members of color and being tapped not only to mentor and sit on every committee that desires a BIPOC perspective but also to help students process their own experiences with microaggressions and racial traumas. Desiree Byrd, PhD, a neuropsychologist and associate professor of psychology at Queens College in Queens, New York, echoed that experience. As the only Black faculty member in her psychology department, she said: “Of course, Black and Brown students come and talk to me about their experiences with racism or microaggressions.”
Given that Byrd wields more power in the academic community, she will offer to advocate on the student’s behalf, addressing the individual or policy involved, whatever the case may be. “They say, ‘No. No. No.’ They are so afraid of retaliation,” she said. “In academia, references are critical for the next step.” Byrd stressed that she would never jeopardize a student’s trust, so she ends up carrying their experiences with her. “That’s hard,” she said.
Along with recognizing that faculty of color are making contributions that can’t be easily reflected on their curricula vitae, academic leaders also should provide them more time to shoulder that work along with their teaching and research load, Byrd said. Hiring more than one faculty member from an underrepresented group would help, said Byrd, who cited the NIH cluster hiring grant as a step in the right direction.
“So new faculty don’t feel isolated,” she said. “Being just one, even if you are treated nicely, is very, very, very hard.”
Once new BIPOC psychology faculty are brought on board, their voice and diverse perspective—including the lens they bring to their work—should be embraced, Romero said. “So that everyone feels that they can authentically be themselves, and they have a sense of belonging with the institution and the unit.”
“Far too often, BIPOC individuals are engaging in research or teaching that is so innovative, that’s so cutting edge,” Romero said. “It’s not just replicating the same traditional strategies in psychology. Sometimes it’s hard for students and even other faculty to recognize that need for change and accept what that looks like.”
It’s also crucial to foster formal and informal mentorship networks to assist early career faculty as they work their way through the tenure process, Sellers said. At the University of Michigan, some faculty hires have been made in clusters and the university has arranged regular gatherings and dinners involving BIPOC faculty and colleagues who are supportive of their work.
There are “a lot of unwritten rules” regarding how to achieve tenure, not unlike pledging a sorority or fraternity, Sellers said. “There’s a sense that you’re an outsider until you’re an insider,” he said. “You never really know where you stand until that day.”
For an early career faculty member of any background who harbors weaknesses or insecurities, the tenure process will bring those out, Sellers said. For scholars of color, ambiguous interactions can be even more stressful as they “don’t know whether or not the judgment or the action was based on a bias or not,” he said. “That ambiguity is the lifeblood of stress.”
At Academics for Black Survival and Wellness, one of the groups is working to improve an influential aspect of the tenure and promotion process, recommending better approaches to letters of recommendation that capture what Black academics can contribute to an institution. For instance, Mosley described how the group has developed some suggested language, such as calling out a Black scholar’s invisible work by writing that “given the heavy service and teaching load that X has worked under, these accomplishments are even more impressive.”
While Mosley will continue to mentor her students as well as help lead the group that she cofounded, she decided earlier this year to step off the tenure track herself, departing the University of Florida before the fall term began. She decided the move was needed to protect her own emotional resiliency, which had been eroded by experiences of anti-Black racism that occurred during her time at the university. For instance, she said, her experiences have been similar to so many other Black academics who report being tokenized, experiencing microaggressions, and lacking the institutional structures needed to meaningfully support themselves and their Black students at historically White institutions.
“As a Black queer woman who is doing work around racial justice, I’m doing this work that means a lot to me,” Mosley said. “And yet having to use so much of my time and emotional labor to care for and rectify the harm that’s done by other academics to the Black students who I work with, it’s not a good trade-off.”
The situation is not unique to the University of Florida, Mosley said. “These problems happen everywhere.” Early this summer, Mosley gave notice that she was leaving the university.
“I thought that the University of Florida definitely had a ton of resources and brilliant students that would help me do really great diversity science and move the needle on healing racial trauma,” she said in early August, clearly still mourning the need to walk away. “We have been able to do that, but the cost to my own wellness and my students’ wellness has been high.”
