In the corporate world, employers are finding ways to support employees who are caregivers because they realize it provides a competitive advantage to attract and retain employees. The need for robust resources, benefits, and policies is apparent: a Harvard Business School study found that “73% of all employees have some type of current caregiving responsibility.” . . .
Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, Full Professors, Lecturers, faculty-related items.
Several recent reports warn that despite promising announcements about increasing faculty diversity, the actual increase has been sluggish. As summarized by Inside Higher Ed writer Colleen Flaherty, realizing racial parity between the professoriate and the general U.S. population within the next thirty years requires a rate of change that is 3.5 times the current pace. . . .
The recent terrifying shooting in a Colorado nightclub underscores the vulnerability of transgender and LGBTQIA-diverse peoples and the urgent need for better measures to ensure inclusion and safety. According to the Equity and Inclusion Vocabulary [https://www.mtu.edu/diversity-center/resources/vocabulary/] resource from the Michigan Tech Center for Diversity and Inclusion, “Identifying as transgender, or trans, means that one’s internal . . .
Research is showing that data-driven insights are critical to recognizing and rectifying inequities in faculty workloads, particularly service tasks that are expected but don’t count for promotion, such as standing committee membership or mentoring a colleague. Too often, such tasks are expected or requested of women and BIPOC faculty. Rather than “fixing the women/underrepresented” with . . .
November is Native American Heritage Month, and this week’s Roundup is focused on Indigenous researchers in academia, who remain poorly represented, particularly in STEM fields. In the Second Nature article, “Respect and Representation,” four Indigenous scientists speak about the challenges early-career researchers face, and how scientists can respectfully and effectively bring together traditional knowledge and . . .
Students, especially STEMM students, prefer male professors, according to research. Two recent studies highlighted in Inside Higher Ed show that this bias increases both during a course and as the professor ages. In one study, student evaluations of men and women instructors were similar at the beginning of the course. Still, when students received their . . .
Research on bias in academia has focused more on tenure and less on promotion to Full Professor. This week’s feature article from the Chronicle of Higher Education is an exception, describing a study of 2000 promotion to full cases across 10 universities. The study found several potential sources of bias that tend to affect women . . .
This week’s article spotlights disability as an axis of diversity. According to this article, 26% of adult Americans have at least one disability, yet data from 2004 suggest that only 4% of faculty members report a disability. Stigmas or biases, inability to fund graduate education while maintaining necessary medical care, lack of role models, and . . .
Post-Covid burnout, disengagement, and demoralization have become widespread throughout academia as in the broader workforce. We highlight two recent review essays in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In her essay, Rebecca Pope-Ruark explains burnout as “a collection of related symptoms, under the umbrellas of (1) exhaustion, (2) cynicism or depersonalization, and (3) feelings of reduced . . .
Candidate assessment rubrics are helpful in conducting objective faculty searches but do not adequately mitigate bias according to two recent studies. One four-year-long study of the searches in an Engineering department evaluated whether hiring rubrics countered biases. The study found that search committees consistently scored women candidates lower than men on rubrics about research although . . .