2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Despite increasing diversity across many institutions in the U.S., STEM departments remain disproportionately homogenous (O’Meara et al., 2019). While there have been advances in the representation of various demographics within higher education, the underrepresentation of Latine faculty in STEM positions persists (Bensimon et al., 2019). The NSF-funded UC Hiring Interventions for Representation and Equity (HIRE) Alliance addresses this issue by connecting four University of California campuses to examine current hiring practices in search committees focused on hiring teaching-focused faculty (TFF). The initiative also explores TFF experiences that lead to and shape their current roles in the professoriate. To ensure success, we have established a feedback loop among all teams involved in the grant. Additionally, we employ external evaluation methods to assess the effectiveness of our interventions in improving the hiring process for future Latine TFFs and supporting both current and future individuals in their TFF roles within STEM departments across the alliance campuses.

The UC-HIRE Alliance not only aims to increase Latine faculty representation in STEM departments but also to create a sustainable framework that higher education institutions can utilize to navigate the process of inclusive hiring. We have two main teams in our alliance: the faculty fellows team and the research team. Our faculty fellows team has collected data from multiple iterations of the literature-informed workshop interventions held in our Faculty Fellows Learning Communities (FFLCs). These communities comprise faculty who are currently or recently have been on teaching-focused faculty hiring committees. The goal is to empower our Faculty Fellows to become agents of change in their own search committees. Additionally, the UC HIRE Alliance seeks to provide support to both current and future TFFs by illuminating the stories of those who have successfully navigated this career path. Through 19 qualitative interviews with current Latine TFFs across the United States, our research team has taken inductive and deductive approaches to analyze the data. By sharing these stories, our alliance advocates for greater recognition of the vital contributions these faculty make in STEM departments.

There are two primary findings and products that have emerged from this project. First, in conjunction with the FFLCs, we have created a standardized approach to an inclusive TFF search. We developed four rubrics that can be utilized as guidelines for search committees to examine multiple hiring materials, including the job advertisement as well as the teaching statement, research statement, and diversity, equity and inclusion statement using existing literature and feedback from our FFLCs. Second, our work dedicated to examining TFF’s pathways to the professoriate has revealed the multiple forms of resources that these faculty leveraged to navigate the higher education space. We also highlight the often overlooked labor and additional service commitments that these Latine TFFs undertake at their institutions. Furthermore, we found that TFFs assume mentorship roles at multiple levels and endure cultural taxation. Our findings suggest that TFFs play a pivotal role in the overall success of STEM departments, effectively supporting all students as a whole, and Latine students in particular.