2023 Collaborative Network for Computing and Engineering Diversity (CoNECD)
Understanding the Importance of Diversity Climate and Workplace Inclusion for Engineering Faculty
Presented at Session 7 - Track 3: Understanding the Importance of Diversity Climate and Workplace Inclusion for Engineering Faculty
Black and Hispanic faculty are not only underrepresented at selective public universities but especially so in the areas of science and math (Li; Koedel, 2017). Departments of engineering have often found slim or even zero numbers of underrepresented minority faculty members (Nelson &; Brammer, 2010). While some of these problems can be attributed to the challenges of the recruitment of faculty of color, scholars have increasingly pointed to faculty attrition as a core problem (Whitaker, Montgomery, &; Acosta, 2015).
The current mixed-method study has two objectives. The first is to examine the relationship between engineering faculty’s perception of their institution’s diversity climate and their turnover intentions at R1 universities, and the second is to understand how engineering demographic characteristics are associated with those perceptions of Black and Hispanic engineering faculty (BHEF). On the quantitative side, a national cross-sectional survey of 1,161 engineering faculty was analyzed to address the first objective. On the qualitative side, we interviewed 14 BHEF members to better understand our quantitative findings for BHEF to address the second objective.
Our quantitative results suggest the dual role of faculty’s perceptions of how their employers institutionally valued diversity in influencing turnover intentions and mediating the relationships between faculty’s perceptions of diversity climate in their institutions and their turnover intentions. Specifically, Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine how the four latent variables underlying Diversity Climate Survey were associated with engineering faculty’s turnover intentions and their perception of employees’ value of diversity in their working institutions. The faculty who had a higher perception of institutions’ fairness (b = -0.52, p &; .001) and inclusion (b = -0.15, p &; .001) practices tended to tend to have lower turnover intention. However, faculty with a stronger personal value of diversity had a lower perception of how their employer institutionally valued diversity (b =-0.13, p < .01. Sub-analysis results for BHEF will also be reported.
From the qualitative data, we highlight three themes 1) Challenges of the Tenure and Promotion process, 2) Service Overload, and 3) Racial Battle Fatigue.
Tenure Process. Participants spoke in detail about the worries they had about the process. Some of the areas of concern are highlighted by a few select quotes. These quotes highlight the external funding expectations of 1) Engineering faculty, 2) the lack of clear guidelines, and 3) research bias.
Service Overload. The “Service Overload” theme refers to how BHEF often feels obligated to provide service work even though the institution undervalues it despite its centrality to the mission.
Racial Battle Fatigue. In this section, participants detailed how various racial and professional pressures tax and overwhelm BHEF. In one of the highlighted instances, the racial climate was known to be hostile. In the second example, the environment was thought to be inclusive until the participant was able to gain more experience.
Finally, we conclude by integrating our results to interpret the quantitative and qualitative findings together.
-
Dr. Henry Tran University of South Carolina [biography]
-
Ms. Maria L Espino M.A
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6217-9304
Iowa State University of Science and Technology
[biography]
-
Mr. Brian Le UCLA [biography]
-
Dr. Spencer Platt University of South carolina
-
Ruiqin Gao University of South Carolina [biography]
-
Ms. Jungsun Go University of South Carolina [biography]
Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.