Skip to Navigation | Skip to Content
Faculty Resource Network Home

Advancing Women and the Underrepresented in the Academy

A National Symposium
Fall 2007
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Strategies for Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling

Excerpts from the plenary panel, featuring Carrie L. Billy, Deputy Director, American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC).

Strategies for Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling

Excerpts from the plenary panel, featuring Beverly Tatum, President, Spelman College.

Strategies for Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling

Excerpts from the plenary panel, featuring e. Frances White, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, New York University.

Advancing Women and the Underrepresented in the Sciences

Excerpts from the plenary Panel, featuring Joyce Tang, Queens College of the City University of New York.

Advancement of Women of Color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Disciplines

Excerpts from a presentation by Pamela Holland Obiomon, Prairie View A & M University, Virginia Cook Tickles, Shirley Holland-Hunt, NASA, and Adrienne Holland Wowo, UPS

Alternate Paths to University Positions: Women's Choice

Excerpts from a presentation by Susan M. Merritt, Catherine Dwyer, Bernice J. Houle, Pauline H. Mosley and Jean F. Coppola, Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Pace University.

Building Bridges and Removing Walls: Innovation in Higher Education

Excerpts from a presentation by Tracey D. Moore, Arkansas Baptist College, Ebony C. Turner, Dillard University, Valarie M. White, Louisiana Technical College

Charting the Course: The Impact and Implications of Mentoring Experiences of Female Faculty in a HBCU College of Engineering

Excerpts from a presentation by Felecia M. Nave, Suxia Cui, Pamela Obiomon, Sherri S. Frizell and Judy Perkins, Prairie View A & M University

Did You Pledge?: A Strategy to Avoid "Unofficial Hazing" and Using Mentoring to Achieve Tenure

Excerpts from a presentation by Hasaan A. Kirkland, Johnson C. Smith University.

Educational Aspiration and Mentoring the HBCU Student

Excerpts from a presentation by Sarah B. Williams, Alex D. Colvin, Jackie Burns, Elizabeth A. Martin, Cynthia Gary and Lee A. McGriggs, Prairie View A & M University.

Faculty Mentoring Through Engagement: The JCSU Story

Excerpts from a presentation by Marilyn Sutton-Haywood, Bethune-Cookman University, Phyllis Worthy Dawkin and Harriette Richard, Johnson C. Smith University.

Five Practical Actions for Women Accepting the Challenges of the World of Higher Educations

Excerpts from a presentation by Carmen Leonor Martinez-Lopez and Eva I. Kolbusz, Borough of Manhattan Community College

Front and Center: Women and Underrepresented Minorities in Communications

Excerpts from a presentation by Nsenga K. Burton, Goucher College.

Intellectual Power, Social Injustice, and Negotiating Tenure for Criminal Justice Faculty

Excerpts from the session: Immorality, Racism, Overextension of the Self: Problems We Bring to the Academy by Sherrise Truesdale-Moore, Minnesota State University.

Lessons From the Field: Strategies and Priorities to Increase the Representation of Women in STEM

Excerpts from a presentation by Jeanne M. Andreoli, Jane Hammang-Buhl, and Sally A. Welch, Marygrove College.

"Outsiders Within": Strategies for Balancing the "Double/Triple" Experience for Tenure-Track Minority Women Professors at a Teaching Institution

Excerpts from a presentation Kandace L. Harris, Sharon Raynor, and Carmen Walker, Johnson C. Smith University.

Preparing Diverse Leaders to Lead - Diversity in Executive Leadership

Excerpts from a presentation by Helen T. Caldwell, Johnson C. Smith University and RoseMary Watkins, Alabama State University Southern Normal Campus.

Qualities Utilized to Engender Equity and Nurture for Success

Excerpts from a presentation by Thelma Baxter, Manhattan College and Joan Tropnas, St. John's University.

The Overextension of Self in the Academy: "The Super Nigger Syndrome"

Excerpts from the session: Immorality, Racism, Overextension of the Self: Problems We Bring to the Academy by Jon A. Yasin, Bergen Community College.

"To Be Or Not To Be": Woman-Professor-Other (Administrator?)

Excerpts from a presentation by Leslie Gutierrez, BerNadette Lawson-Williams, and Sharon D. Raynor, Johnson C. Smith University.

College Learning for the New Global Century

Basis for the presentation by Carol Geary Schneider, AAC&U, "Making Excellence Inclusive", reprinted with the permission of Dr. Geary Schneider.

From the Executive Director

When viewed through the lens of the past few decades, a quick glance at the enrollment statistics in today’s institutions of higher learning can provide a surge of optimism and hope. Women and the underrepresented are applying to college, graduating, and entering the workforce at record rates. The face of today’s student body increasingly appears to be a microcosm of American society. But an analysis of the demographics of the leaders on today’s campuses points to a series of startling disparities. Women and minorities pursue fewer advanced degrees, occupy a smaller percentage of tenured positions, and, on average, earn lower salaries than their white male counterparts. The hard sciences are represented by a woefully small number of women, and the struggle to level the playing field for minorities in the academy is moving, as one scholar notes, "at glacial speed.” Historically underrepresented students are occupying a greater number of seats in today’s college and university classrooms, but they are finding that the leaders - the role models - who stand at the front of these classrooms do not adequately represent them.


Why does the modern academy lag behind other professions in its advancement of women and minorities? Why is there an absence of these populations in faculty applicant pools, and why is the "glass ceiling” of leadership still so difficult to penetrate? How are colleges and universities to respond to this alarming situation, and how are they to foster observable indicators of improvement? What changes need to be made at the grassroots level of curriculum design to promote more lasting interest in professional academic careers among underrepresented populations? What changes need to be implemented at the administrative level to achieve more representational hiring and promotion practices?


In November 2007 faculty members and other representatives of Faculty Resource Network institutions addressed these questions and issues during a national symposium on "Advancing Women and the Underrepresented in the Academy ," hosted by the Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. This symposium offered an opportunity for faculty members and administrators to consider the implications of this critically important topic.


In this fifth issue of our online NETWORK: A Journal of Faculty Development, we present excerpts from a number of the presentations that were delivered during that symposium.

Debra M. Szybinski
Executive Director, Faculty Resource Network