Preparing Future Minority Faculty for the Professoriate

North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, Greensboro NC

Investigators

Abstract

The Preparing Future Minority Faculty project at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University is a three-year project to develop and implement a networked improvement community (NIC) and address broadening the participation of underrepresented minorities holding faculty positions in engineering. There is a disproportionately small number of faculty members from underrepresented groups who hold positions in US colleges and universities, particularly in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and math. To meet this challenge, the project develops strategies, training materials, and a structured mentoring program to increase the capability of graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows who intend to become tenure track faculty members in engineering, engineering technology, and the sciences. Participation in the project will enable graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows to become more effective faculty members. An emphasis is placed on the development of participant's portfolio in the areas of teaching, research, and service well in advance of beginning their career. The network improvement community brings together an alliance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions, researchers, practitioners, industry partners, community stakeholders, school districts, and mentoring organizations. Working together the community will develop a model to comprehensively support the mentoring and training of underrepresented minorities to become effective faculty. The goals of the project are to: 1) implement an evidence-based comprehensive professional development model; 2) train graduate students in the core competency skills needed to effectively navigate the graduate and postdoctoral training process and to successfully achieve careers in the engineering professoriate; and 3) collaborate, promote, and plan activities to enhance and complement existing efforts of an alliance of HBCUs and MSIs to achieve the common goal of increasing the representation and preparation of underrepresented minorities in the professoriate. A quasi-experimental research design with matched groups will be used to the effectiveness of the project.