Diversity in the Classroom Requires Diverse Faculty

• In Event: Teaching for Equity and Inclusion

Abstract

Students from underrepresented groups feel a greater sense of belonging and perform better in the classroom when they have instructors, mentors, and advisors that share their identities. Yet, at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), political science departments often lack faculty diversity. The COPLAC ADVANCE PLAN project conducted an investigation of women faculty in STEM at 30 PUIs over the past five years, gathering data on women’s representation, the prevalence of policies focused on faculty equity, and administrator and faculty attitudes towards equity work on campus. We found that political science and economics had the lowest rates of women faculty in the social sciences at the PUIs in our sample. Further, our survey results show that while administrators believe they are implementing equitable policies that help promote and retain diverse faculty, women faculty disagree. In this paper, we present the findings of our latest survey that identifies the barriers to addressing equity among faculty. Our goal is to elucidate ways that faculty can work within their departments and hand-in-hand with administrators to implement policy change that promotes faculty equity and diversity not only in political science, but across the campuses of PUIs.

Author

• Karleen West, SUNY Geneseo