Black and Hispanic faculty members seeking promotion at research universities face career-damaging biases, with their scholarly production judged more harshly than that of their peers, according to a groundbreaking initiative co-led by UC Merced that aims to uncover the roots of these biases and develop strategies for change.
Junior professors are generally evaluated and voted on for promotion and tenure by committees comprising senior colleagues. In one of the studies conducted by the research team, results suggest that faculty from underrepresented minorities received 7% more negative votes from committees than their non-minority peers. Further, minority faculty were 44% less likely to receive unanimous votes of approval. The judgment of women minority faculty was particularly harsh.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, are part of a research program co-led by the University of Houston and funded by $6.5 million in grants from the National Science Foundation. The program began four years ago with a $2 million grant to identify bias in academic evaluations. Research under a current $4.5 million grant focuses on understanding what drives the biases and developing policies to mitigate them.
The current NSF grant also will fund a Center for Equity in Faculty Advancement at UC Merced. The center’s development is led by UC Merced psychology Professor Christiane Spitzmueller, a member of the university’s Health Sciences Research Institute and a lead investigator for the research initiative.
The initiative underscores and partially explains the lack of faculty from underrepresented minorities on U.S. campuses. Blacks and Hispanics account for only 14% of the nation’s assistant professors and 8% of its full professors, while those minorities make up 30% of the U.S. population.
This lack of representation not only hinders professional academics but impacts minority students, who look to faculty members for inspiration and mentoring. Learning from Black and Hispanic professors increases students’ likelihood of pursuing STEM careers or simply remaining on academic paths.
