Minority Professors ‘Rare’ in Sciences

MILWAUKEE _ Women and minorities are significantly underrepresented as professors in science and engineering departments at the top research universities across the country.

As a result, tenured positions in those departments are primarily the realm of white men, according to a recent study.

The study, conducted by Donna J. Nelson, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, looks at all faculty in the top 100 university science, technology, engineering and mathematics departments in the nation, counting the number of tenured and tenure-track professors by gender, race and ethnicity.

In the 40-professor chemistry department of University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, four professors are female and six are Asian.

None is African-American, Hispanic or American Indian.

Of the 76 professors in the math and statistics department, eight are female, 16 are Asian, one is African-American and one is Hispanic. None is American Indian.

“The top faculty are important because that’s where future science leaders come from,” Nelson said. In most of those disciplines, she added, women and minority professors are so rare that a minority student can earn an advanced degree “without being taught by or having access” to a minority professor.

“A cycle is perpetuated,” the study says. “Minorities are less likely to enter and remain in science and engineering when they lack mentors and role models.”

“It is a dire and grim picture of the professional ranks,” said Irving P. McPhail, a senior official with the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, which seeks to increase the cadre of minority students who attain college degrees in science by enhancing pre-engineering activities in secondary education.

Terry Millar, a mathematics professor at UW-Madison and an associate dean in the Graduate School, said the situation isn’t “as simple as saying we have to hire more minorities. This is a long-term problem that requires an integrated approach from K-12 through college and graduate school.”

Years later, graduate students often return to their university of origin to teach. “If we’re not producing PhDs of color,” then the pool of future professors to draw from will be small, Millar said.

UW-Madison is trying hard to attract minority students “and is doing an excellent job recruiting, mentoring, graduating and helping minorities and women get good jobs. But the faculty isn’t diverse,” said Richard A. Tapia, a math professor at the university in 1969-’70 who is now at Rice University.

The point of the study is that integration and diversity aren’t taking place at the upper level, Tapia said.

Millar said the school is trying to change the culture of hiring at both the college and department levels. “Part of the responsibility of the university administration is to raise awareness of the need for minority faculty,” he said.

At UW-Milwaukee, Provost Rita Cheng said she is conscious every day of the need to bring ethnic and gender diversity to the campus and the classroom.

“We tell deans to seek a diverse pool of candidates; we make sure our search committees are diverse; we look at the pipeline and encourage PhD graduates in other schools to consider Milwaukee as a place to work,” she said.

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(c) 2007, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

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