Black Minds Matter: The Call to Retention of Young Black Academics (YBAs) in Higher Education

摘要

Academics like Dr. Melina Abdullah have helped give birth to the Black Lives Matter movement; however, in higher education the slogan transforms into a slightly different context, and should become the movement of "Black minds matter." For nearly 50 years, Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) have sought to increase their compositional diversity, in efforts to create environments where their student population can look reflectively upon faces similar to their own. Universities have sought to implement principles of Critical Mass theory to diversify the student compositional demographics, in addition to significant retention and recruitment initiatives geared toward faculty (Whitaker, Montgomery, & Martinez-Acosta, 2015). Despite such initiatives, the overall attrition rate for Underrepresented Minority faculty is 48%, with rates of 27%, 36%, 42%, and 90% for Asian, Hispanic, Native American and Black faculty respectively. The use of the COPE © Model in IHEs could potentially provide outlets of empowerment for URM that would increase retention.