Invitation to Engage: Innovative and Collaborative Approaches to Diversifying the STEM Professoriate

Published in: Engineering Innovations for Global Sustainability: Proceedings of the 14th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology
Date of Conference: July 20-22, 2016
Location of Conference: San Jose, Costa Rica
Authors: Autumn M. Reed
Renetta G. Tull
Refereed Paper: #92

Abstract:

IIn order to address the challenges of the 21st century, especially those related to global sustainability, it is critical that institutions of higher education recruit, retain, and advance a diverse and excellent STEM professoriate. Notwithstanding such awareness and programmatic interventions as the National Science Foundation’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program and ADVANCE program, in the United States, African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos, and women remain underrepresented at all points along the pathway to the STEM professoriate. This paper highlights the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s (UMBC) efforts to acknowledge and directly confront its own challenges with faculty diversity in STEM through innovative approaches and partnerships under the rubric of “Invitation to Engage.” We hope that our open conversation about this pressing issue, along with a review of our revised approaches, will encourage other institutions to examine their current practices, and serve as an adaptable model to enact change. Through this paper, we issue an open invitation for others to critically engage in these dialogues and to develop and take impactful and novel actions to repair the pathway to the STEM professoriate.