Professorial Advancement Initiative: A Cross-Institutional Collaboration to Increase Faculty Diversity in STEM

Aman Yadav; Mark J T Smith; Charity Rae Farber; Linda J Mason

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733173

Professorial Advancement Initiative: A Cross-Institutional Collaboration to Increase Faculty Diversity in STEM

Front Psychol. 2021 Oct 12:12:733173. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733173. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Aman Yadav¹, Mark J T Smith², Charity Rae Farber³, Linda J Mason⁴

Affiliations

¹ College of Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States.
² Graduate School, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States.
³ Big Ten Academic Alliance, Champaign, IL, United States.
⁴ The Graduate School, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States.

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the model for faculty diversity developed as part of the Professorial Advancement Initiative (PAI) funded under the NSF AGEP program. The PAI, consisting of 12 of the 14 Big Ten Academic Alliance universities, had the goal of doubling the rate at which the universities hired tenure-track minoritized faculty, defined by National Science Foundation as African Americans, Hispanic/Latinx, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. This paper reviews the key programmatic elements of the PAI and discusses lessons learned and the practices developed that helped the Alliance achieve its faculty diversity goal.

Keywords: faculty diversity; faculty hiring; mentoring; postdoc fellow; systemic change.