Spring 2022
"Faculty of color and female faculty disproportionately experience stress due to discrimination and feel they have to work harder than their colleagues to be perceived as a legitimate scholar" (2019 HERi survey).
Given this reality, what responsibility do we have for making equity-minded decisions, for creating and supporting policies and practices that sustain cultures of belonging and thriving, and fully develop and engage BIPOC faculty talent? Importantly, how can white-identified faculty spend their privilege to actionably eliminate inequitable practices in recruitment, retention, and promotion?
At IU Bloomington, BIPOC faculty report being "less satisfied" than their white-identified colleagues with paths to promotion, departmental collegiality, collaboration, and the nature and amount of service work assigned. (IU VPFAA COACHE Faculty Satisfaction 2021). Their experiences with exclusion-e.g., feeling isolated and needing to work twice as hard to be valued or recognized-resonate with the widespread experiences of other BIPOC faculty in higher education.
To address this, the College is engaging with faculty through an Equity Centered Faculty Lifecycle Series. In each virtual session, featured guests will present their experiences, challenges, and successes. College faculty will reflect on, evaluate, and plan for actions and interventions that create equity for BIPOC faculty across multiple domains of a faculty career. We hope that the series will provide faculty with opportunities to not only interrogate but to disrupt structural inequities in the policies and practices that govern the faculty lifecycle–from recruitment to retirement–with the goal of supporting the retention and success of BIPOC faculty over the course of their academic career.
