Academy for Holistic Reimagining of the Recruitment, Mentoring, and Retention of Racially Minoritized Faculty

For those college and university leaders who are looking inward to understand why those who are members of racially minoritized groups are declining academic job offers or departing their institutions at disproportionate rates, we are pleased to now offer the Academy for Holistic Reimagining of the Recruitment, Mentoring, and Retention of Racially Minoritized Faculty. The Academy provides time with faculty experts and peers to gain perspective on the recruitment, mentoring, and retention practices that do (and do not) create community and meaningful engagement for faculty of color. It is designed to reorient prevailing perspectives on faculty success away from dehumanizing ‘pipeline’ and ‘productivity’ models to approaches grounded in community, relationship, solidarity, and well-being.

The program foregrounds concern for the campus, disciplinary, and community climates into which faculty of color are being invited, questioning the extent to which they are places for connectedness and thriving. The academy is informed by racial realism concerning the micro- and macro-aggressions, threats, and racist assaults that members of racially minoritized groups face at historically and predominantly white institutions (and in the many disciplinary contexts within minority serving institutions where white epistemologies continue to dominate). We offer a ‘holistic reimagining’ of faculty recruitment, mentoring, and retention that repositions a leader’s role from providing acculturating support for ‘inclusion’ and ‘success’ into historically unsafe academic environment to creating spaces that foster mutual responsibility and commitment for the transformation of oppressive practices.

OUR PROGRAM

The Academy’s sessions include small and large group discussions, case studies and scenarios, interactive activities, presentations by faculty, recommended and supplementary readings, and moments for individual reflection. The program is designed to foster academic leaders’ capacity for visible and embodied anti-racist leadership. Although sessions, discussions, case studies, and activities will engage with the practical dimensions of academic leadership, the program’s purpose is not fundamentally to provide a ‘tool kit’ or ‘tips of the trade’. Instead, the Academy offers a chance to learn about the ways that academia is steeped in oppressive white cultural practices and to question assumptions about the way things should be, how we should be together in the academy, and whose knowledge and ways of being count as valued and legitimate.

In keeping with our ‘reimagining’ of faculty life and work in terms of community and relationship, the program’s sessions have not been ordered to treat recruitment, mentoring, and retention as separate administrative functions. Seeking to avoid the infamous ‘silo-ing’ of academia, liberatory and critical perspectives thread across the sessions with a shared interest in understanding how to consistently humanize academic spaces, policies, and practices.

OUR PARTICIPANTS

The Academy is designed for leaders in a variety of roles such as deans, associate deans for faculty, department chairs, associate provosts for faculty development, faculty directors of mentoring programs, and for diversity, equity, and inclusion officers who want to be strategic and thoughtful in leading anti-racist transformational change at their institutions. Our program is for those whose moral agency and intellectual curiosity have been activated, and who are interested in deepening their cultural competencies to address racism in all forms—especially institutionalized racism. It is for those who have already been engaging in reflective practice with the goal of strengthening their anti-racist leadership, and who are now digging deeper to embody the commitments necessary to face the challenges inherent in carrying out transformational change. Participants in this Academy should come with an interest in naming intersectional systems of oppression with specificity, a readiness to generate ideas about how to address the harms experienced by racially minoritized faculty at the root of those problems, and a willingness to change systems and structures on their own campuses. Note that the Academy is not designed for academic leaders of colleges and universities outside the United States or for leaders of the branch campuses of U.S. institutions in other countries.

MESSAGE FROM OUR DIRECTOR

LaWanda Ward

LaWanda W. M. Ward, J.D., PhD

Director, Academy for Holistic Reimagining of the Recruitment, Mentoring and Retention of Racially Minoritized Faculty

Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education

Associate Professor, Education

Program Coordinator, Residential M.Ed. in Higher Education

In 1972 Title VII, a federal law that prohibits employer discrimination based on race, color, sex/gender, national origin, and religion, was extended to cover institutions of higher education. Initially Title VII was not deemed as necessary legislation for postsecondary institutions. Yet during the Congressional hearings, testimonies describing how racially minoritized and white women experienced discriminatory practices at colleges and universities proved the dire need for federal legal intervention.

Despite the 50-year milestone in 2022 of Title VII’s implementation within higher education, reports of intersectional, racially gendered discrimination among tenure-seeking faculty of color saturate print and digital media today. How does employment discrimination within higher education remain a problem when there are federal (and state) laws to deter and address claims of mistreatment? What would it mean for institutions to center experiences of racially minoritized faculty to examine and address institutional oppressions that place the onus on racially minoritized faculty to not only survive but to thrive? How can leaders shift and eradicate those burdens? These questions and others like them will be grappled with during the Academy for Holistic Reimagining of the Recruitment, Mentoring, and Retention of Racially Minoritized Faculty.

Our faculty and institutional leader participants do not claim to have all the answers; yet we are committed to sharing scholarship and examples that name and explain how the problematic logics of whiteness, anti-blackness, racial capitalism, and acculturation normalize exploitation of and violence against faculty of color. We will engage in and invite discussions about transformative changes within institutional cultures that require courageous antiracist leadership to create and maintain dignity affirming work environments for racially minoritized faculty. The work is not easy nor without critique and resistance; yet we are committed to the cause. Ultimately, this academy is about engaging with institutional leaders who are unapologetically committed to racially just and equitable tenure and promotion processes and work environments in which humanizing practices create cultures and norms.

Contact

CSHE Administrative Team

Email:

leadershipacad@psu.edu

Nominations

Nominations are currently being accepted.

To be considered for the Academy, potential participants must be nominated by a colleague or complete a self-nomination form. The nomination form includes a question requesting a brief statement (e.g., 4-5 sentences) of recommendation or for self-nominators a statement of interest explaining how the nominee’s/your prior professional experiences and current responsibilities position the nominee/you well to benefit from participation in this Academy. Nominations, which will be reviewed on a rolling basis, should be submitted by September 3rd. For those accepted, registration and payment will be due by September 9th.