Considerations for the effective mentoring of STEM women of color faculty at a striving private technical university

摘要

Underrepresentation of women of color, WoC (African American, Latina American, and Native American) faculty, in STEM disciplines at predominately major-group institutions in the U.S., is of great concern. Of faculty positions, at the end of the first decade of this century, American-Indian women held 0.6 percent, Latinas held 4.0 percent, Asian-American women held 6.7 percent, and African-American women held 7.0 percent while European-American women held 78.2 percent [12]. Delgado and Stefanek [6], Thomas and Hollenshead [14], and Cooper and Stephens [3] point out WoC faculty's unique challenges in higher education. Compared to their majority-group female colleagues, WoC face additional barriers based on the intersections of race/ethnicity and gender. They live with multiple marginality [2,5,16,15]. Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) STEM WoC faculty's representation is dismal even as some continue to be denied tenure. This situation provides impetus for this National Science Foundation-funded ADVANCE project whose underlying objective is to examine barriers to STEM WoC faculty's career success. The lack of effective mentoring contributes to the STEM WoC faculty's low retention and advancement rate. Therefore, there is a need for RIT to establish a mentoring program that takes STEM WoC faculty's unique circumstance into consideration.