CIRTL Forum: June 18th, 2008
MSI Session A : Talk

[Introduction by Katherine Friedrich]: In the following CIRTL Forum session, speakers describe what the minority serving institutions where they work are seeking when they hire new faculty, and what future faculty can expect when applying to their institutions.

[Orlando Taylor]: Again, my name is Orlando Taylor. I'm from Howard University in Washington. This is a panel that's looking at employing, employment trends and needs and expectations at minority serving institutions. I'm joined by three distinguished colleagues, I'll introduce you to them momentarily, but I should tell you before I do that in trying to pick a panel, a group of panelists that would be reflective of the diversity of minority serving institutions was a rather difficult task. We wanted to have some institutions that were public institutions, and all three of my colleagues here are from public institutions. And we wanted at lease one to be from a private institution, and I'm that one person. We wanted somebody to come from an institution that was largely a research one or research extensive university, and I'm that person, and one of the others who came from doctoral granting institutions that were not research institutions but had a more masters focus but had some doctoral programs, that's my colleague Dr. Kelly Mack to my left. We wanted someone who came from an institution that was largely undergraduate with a few masters programs, that would be my colleague Clytrice Watson who is to Dr. Mack's left. And we wanted someone to come from a Hispanic serving institution, and that's my colleague Olac Fuentes who is at the end of the table. What we do not have is a person from a liberal arts college, and a lot of minority serving institutions are four year institutions, and we do not have a person from a community college, and many of the minority serving institutions are two year institutions. 29 of the 32 tribal colleges, for example, are two-year institutions. Several urban community colleges are classified as either Hispanic serving or HBCU's. So I want you to understand that we are going to try to speak for the whole range of these institutions, but remember that just as the other panelists are looking at a very narrow segment of American higher education, we have the whole range in the group called "minority serving". So with that in mind, I'll introduce our panelists. To my left is professor Kelly Mack. She's a professor in the department of Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. In addition to being a professor, a full professor at the university, she chairs the university wide promotions and tenure committee, and so she can give some insights about what it takes to get promoted to get tenure at a place like the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and you have a very colorful brochure that puts the rest of ours to shame. She didn't tell us she was going to do this to us, brought these beautiful brochures from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. To her right is Dr. Clytrice Watson. Dr. Watson is an assistant professor at Delaware State University in Dover, Delaware, and I forgot to mention, we tried to get a panel made up of different ranks of people. While Dr. Mack is a professor, Dr. Watson is an assistant professor so she can tell you about what people are looking for in institutions from the vantage point of a recently tenure tracked individual. She is also in the department of Biology at Delaware State University, and she'll speak from the perspective of that institution. And then on the far left, Dr. Olac Fuentes is in the department of Computer Science and he's an associate professor. So we have the full range of professors, we have a dean who also is a professor, and we hopefully can comment about what institutions are looking for of the type that we represent here today. We'll speak in the order that they were introduced. Professor Mack, Professor Watson, then Professor Fuentes.

[Kelly Mack]: Good afternoon. [mumbling, and sounds of moving the mic] Ok, we're ok now. I'd pleased to be here to share my comments and most of them will come from the perspective of being the chair of the promotion and tenure committee. And I'll start by saying that when we evaluate someone for promotion and tenure, it's done on a 100 point scale. 50 points are allotted for teaching, and 30 points for research, and 20 points for service. That gives you some idea of the emphasis that we place on teaching. When I consider the kinds of skills that one would need to have to be successful at an institution like mine, I'd like to start with teaching. One of the primary things that I think is necessary is cultural competency, or cultural sensitivity to the student population, now ours being African American. And I think that if you are African American that you have a particular advantage because you understand the culture that the students come from. I would, if I, in a perfect world if I could create graduate student training, I would create workshops on cultural sensitivity. And I don't think that cultural sensitivity also refers to issues of race. I also think it refers to issues of age. Because I am African American I don't assume to know what's important to my students. So I spend an awful lot of time listening to them talk to one another, and the things that they talk about, and I listen to the kinds of television shows that they watch, and I would be embarrassed to tell you in this forum what TV shows I watch just so that I can relate to what they think is important, so that we have a basis for communication. Also, we find that there are communication difficulties or lack of cultural sensitivity, no just between say white professors and our African American students, but we also have a lot of African faculty on our campus and they were educated in the British system, and they have a different way of thinking about the role of students. They really expect for students to give them respect, and that's very important to them, and our students come from a generation where those types of values may not have been emphasized coming through school so there's a huge disconnect there. In the absence of cultural sensitivity if I were someone who was graduating from graduate school now, or if I were someone who was completing a post doc and considering going to a minority serving institution, I would immerse myself in the culture almost like if you were going to move to Italy or move to France, that you would begin to learn the language, and that you would just immerse yourself in the culture. I think that that's an easy way to gain some cultural competency, to learn about the students. You'd have to spend a copious amount of time with them, but in lieu of what the infrastructure that we lack now in terms of promoting cultural sensitivity that's what I would recommend. In terms of research skills, we see a lot of new faculty who come from primarily research intensive institutions or research extensive institutions where there is a grand infrastructure for doing research. There are technicians that are available, there are supplies on end, there are, there's equipment, if the equipment is not available in your lab, it's down the hall, it's no further than upstairs or across campus. And when students, not students, I'm sorry, when new faculty arrive at institutions like ours, and by institutions like ours I'm referring to perhaps an institution, it could be a Historically Black Institution, minority serving, it could be a liberal arts institution, all of them would be at distances farther along or not as far along this continuum of becoming research intensive. And oftentimes, depending on where the institution is in developing it's research focus, sometimes those individuals can arrive at the campus and be greeted with an empty room. Even though there might be some start up funds available, there may be some released time available, but it's an empty room and while these individuals are able, certainly capable of doing research, those exercises in setting up the lab from an empty room, remembering to buy the pipette when you buy the pipette tips. Little things like that that make all the difference. And, in the whole realm of things can slow you down in terms of getting those publications out, in terms of getting preliminary data for research proposals and grants and the like. And so, again, in a perfect world, if I were to create a training regimen for graduate students, I would incorporate some kind of simulations of laboratory set ups or for those of us who are mentors, force our graduate students to sit down and look at everything that they need in order to get their experiments done before they graduate. And then finally, in the area of service, because we do place a lot of emphasis on services, it counts for as much as 20% of the total, the total of what we consider for promotion and tenure. And I go to a lot of forums where graduate students and post docs are told, when you get to your first position and they ask you to serve on committees, just say no. You should just say no. At an institution like mine, when we hire someone as a tenure track faculty or person, we are committed to getting that person promoted and tenured at all cost. So while our institution may not provide start up funds. We may not mandate reduced teaching loads, when a new person comes those of us who are senior will take on additional responsibilities so that that person can get settled. We will look for monies in the existing grants that we have and funnel that to the new faculty person. And in burdening ourselves, we think that we are creating an atmosphere where this new faculty person can thrive. We also understand that service is a huge consideration in promotion and tenure. So we will oftentimes reserve particular committees for a new faculty person that we feel gives them the most exposure and the most experience for going toward promotion and tenure. And so when you have an individual who shows up and all they've been taught to say is, "No", to that, then it creates a huge disconnect, and then that individual becomes labeled as being difficult to work with, unmanageable, uncooperative and non-collaborative. And then that starts a whole other chain of events that would be detrimental to the new faculty person. So, again in my perfect world, if I were to create graduate training, I would incorporate some aspects of self-advocacy, some aspects of how to critically analyze the environment such that if a person did arrive in a situation such as the one I described, that they could be able to quickly ascertain that, here's an environment where I can grow. And so it might not be beneficial for me to just blanketly continue to say, "no" in every instance. Thank you.

[Clytrice Watson]: Hi,  good afternoon. Again, my name is Clytrice, I'm from Delaware State University and our institution is an HBCU, and it's a masters degree granting institution. As a junior faculty going into my third year, there are some points that I wanted to highlight that have helped me become a successful faculty member thus far. The first thing, the ability to communicate with the students. Because it is an HBCU, we serve a large population of minority students, but not just the fact that they're minority students, you have students coming from different age groups, different genders and social backgrounds. So you have to be able to communicate effectively with these students in the classroom as well as outside of the classroom. And having said that, just to give an example, I've had students that were old enough to be my parents. And I've had students that I'm old enough to be their parent. And I have to know that I'm still the teacher and even though I may be responding to some as, "Yes Ma'm" or, "Yes Sir", I'm still the teacher and I still have to take the lead in that regard. The different races and ethnic backgrounds has allowed me to step outside of my own personal box that I've created around myself and learn about different ethnic background or ethnic groups, and it has been the most delightful experience. All of my formal education has been in HBCU's, and because Delaware State University caters to a large range of students, I have had the opportunity to meet students from different countries, different social backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds, and it really has been enlightening to me personally, and I think it has contributed to my professional growth as well. Secondly, I think it's important to be aware, or to have social and political awareness, because these things do contribute to your effectiveness as a teacher. With that regard, as Dr. Mack had mentioned watching current TV shows, I also listen to a variety of different music because, one, I have children so I need to be aware of what they're listening to. But secondly, I like to be able to engage in conversations with students outside of the science, the sciences, because that makes them more comfortable and they feel like they can come and talk to you and it makes you more approachable. In regard to TV shows, CSI has caused this trend of forensic science interest, and because Delaware State has just started a new forensic biology program and I'm the lead faculty on that program, we have a large number of students who are interested in becoming CSI. So, I like that show as well, but you also have to remind them that that's been glamorized, or Hollywood-tized, if that's a word, and you have to debunk that CSI effect and really get them to understand the science behind it and having said that, this CSI effect has led to an increase enrollment in forensic science programs. Also, the political side of that, if any of you go to CNN.com every day as I do, I'm addicted to CNN.com, and you paid attention to some of the things that have been taking place, a number of men that have been exonerated for crimes that they did not commit based on DNA evidence, and this has just caused quite a stare, particularly in African American community, because if you look at those faces of those individuals being exonerated, they mirror the images of the students that we serve. They're black faces, so this has created quite an interest in minority students as well, and non-minority students alike. So it's important to be politically aware and socially aware of what's going on around you. Again, to make you a more effective teacher. Our University, when I went to school there, I did my masters work at Delaware State, we were a teaching institution, and when I came back to work, they are now transforming into a research institution. So I came back and I was a little confused, because I thought I was going to back into a teaching environment, but they're really emphasizing research, but my love is teaching. So I have to try to find that balance, and that's my third point. Having the ability to manage your time and multi-task because it is an art to be able to teach, do research, mentor, and whatever else your chair person tells you to do. So, it's definitely an art to be able to bring balance to your life, and especially for young faculty, if you have a family, young women and young men who have families, or young families, it's very difficult, but it is doable. And I encourage my students to pursue your academics first, but if you choose the life, a different road in life then just be aware that there are, it's a different level of difficulty when you're trying to balance a family and your career, but it's definitely doable. Again, going back to social awareness, I am a food microbiologist and I do microbial research related to foods and if you've been watching CNN.com, there's been an outbreak of salmonella on tomatoes. Well I have a graduate student and the project that we developed for her last year was looking at the efficiency of commercial sanitizers at removing pathogen salmonella from tomatoes. And she was really having a hard time just pulling it all together, and I called her up and I said, "go to yahoo.com", and there was a big article on salmonella and tomatoes. And she called be back, "Dr. Watson, this is so wonderful, this really goes along with my research!", and being able to tie those social aspects, or those social events into their research really helps and it gives the student a different perspective and it gives them motivation to do really well with their projects. And my graduate student by the way is a non-minority, so we've also had the opportunity to learn quite a bit from each other in a lot of different regards. So, that's my little addition to this panel.

[Orlando Taylor]: Thank you, Professor Fuentes?

[Olac Fuentes]: Ok, so first let me tell you a little but about UTEP because I neglected to bring an informational sheet like my colleagues did. So, UTEP is a member of the University of Texas system. It's located in extreme west Texas, it borders New Mexico and all Mexico. It has a sister city of the Mexican side called Ciudad Juarez. El Paso has about 700 thousand, and together El Paso and Juarez have about 2 million habitants. Our student population is about 20 thousand, 75% of those are Hispanic Americans. 10% of those are Mexican nationals, sometimes it's hard to draw the line between those two. We have many people who were born in El Paso and grew up in Juarez, those count as Hispanic Americans. And then about 10% are from other races, mostly white. We belong to the research university "high research activity" category which is I think the second one. So that's among the top two hundred universities in terms of research output. The mission of the university is to advance the region through knowledge, and in particular, to provide access to excellence. So we combine both things. We're not an open admissions university in the sense that everybody who applies gets admitted, but almost. We only admit 98% of the applicants so we're not quite. But then, since the mission is to provide access to excellence, that means accepting almost everybody but still provide opportunities to excel. And I think we do a pretty good job at that, I'll tell you more about that later. Our student population is, besides being Hispanic, is slightly different from that of most other universities. Our average age varies between 24 and 25 from year to year, so it's high for U.S. standard. So we have many, many, many, non-traditional students, many are married, many have children, many students who are the traditional age have children. Like 18, 19 years old and they have children. Most of our students, I think about 90%, work outside of the classroom, and most, I don't have the exact number, but most are first generation college students. So, these present some challenges, so I'll tell you some of the common features of our students at the risk of maybe over generalizing. So, one of the features since they are first generation college students is a lack of role models and lack of guidance. So for students in those places can use their parents as guidance, they have been through the process of attending college. They know what to do in certain situations, they know what's important and what's not. Our students don't normally have that, so that responsibility normally will fall upon the faculty. The families, in particular extended families, play a very important role in these people more than in other families and that can be a very good thing. Your family support can push student to succeed, but, since they normally don't have the experience or the knowledge about what college life is, sometimes the advice is not the best. So we, I've had students tell me, well, my father is telling me that I should get a job because in high school I took 25 hours, and now I'm only taking 12 hours. So he's saying, well, "you should work in the remainder of the time, it's just 12 hours sitting there". I've even told him, bring your father here, I'll explain to him what the situation is, or your grandfather, or whatever because it’s the extended family we're talking about here. Another cultural feature is a reluctance to stand out. In fact, there's a recent interesting study that shows, they show a plot of popularity against GPA for students of different groups. For blacks, I mean for whites, it's almost a straight line. The higher the GPA, the more popular you are. It turns out that for Blacks, it turns at around 3.2. So you get more popular, once you get to 3.2 it flattens a little bit, and if you get better than that, that's bad. They don't like you. Well for Hispanics the effect is a lot more pronounced. It's flat from zero up to 2.5, and it goes down from there. So you have to take that into consideration. So you have a very good student telling him or her that in front of everybody is not necessarily a good thing, most likely it's a bad thing. So those are things that you have to understand. They lack self confidence commonly so normally all faculty members like to invite their best students to join the research groups. I had a colleague who has a research group just like everybody else and I observed the fact that all his students were non-Hispanic. And I said, "Have you realized that?". "Well, it just happened that way, I'm not discriminating or anything". I said, "How do you choose people to join your research group?". "Well, normally the ones who ask good questions in class, well those are the smart and good students so I invite them to join my group." I had to explain to him, "Well, that might be true in other places, but here you have to look more carefully". There are many smart people who will just sit quietly in the last row, you'll never notice them the whole semester, when you apply the final exam you realize that they get a perfect grade, but they won't stand out, so you have to be aware of that. Then also, the sense of respect. They view faculty with an enormous sense of respect, and that can be a good thing, but very often it’s not so good. They are very reluctant to correct you. If you make a mistake, they won't tell you. I teach computer science so very often I write a program that solves a problem and too often I make mistakes. I write the wrong identifier, whatever. Very often I write the program, I finish the class, when I'm erasing I find the mistake. A real bad mistake, and it's impossible for me to think that out of 50 people no body noticed it. What happened? Everybody noticed, or most people noticed, and no body wanted to tell me because they thought that it was disrespectful. So, as a faculty member you have to try to educate them to tell them, "well, you're paying to be here, you ask questions, if I'm wrong it's your responsibility to tell me". And I'm trying that with some success, not as much as I would like to have. And just a few words on what we're looking for in new faculty. In general, we don't have set numbers like in other places. It's divided between, for hires, potential for research, potential for teaching, and potential for service. For tenure decisions, actual performance in all those things. They don't give you an actual number, but research is a little bit more heavily weighted than the other two. If I was forced to come up with a number, I'd say 40, 35, and how much is left? 40 for research, 35 for teaching, and 25 for service. So for research, what do we want? Well, potential for bringing funding. Big surprise. Potential for getting peer reviewed publications, that's also no surprise. Another thing we want is ideas for candidates and a record for incorporating undergraduate students in research. That's very important for us, it's known that there's a very strong correlation between participating in research and having success. It's not clear what the cause and effect is, right? We invite the good students so obviously they were going to succeed regardless of what we did, or maybe that participation was helpful. We really don't know, but it's important to do it. Potential for attracting graduate students, so that means having a visible research program, a nice webpage so that students … most of our grad students are international, just like everywhere else like India and China and so on. For your research area it's very important to find a niche. It's hard to compete with the Stanford's and MIT's. You have to find an area where you are the best, and I think this applies to most situations. For teaching, we're looking for an ability of teaching students with varying levels of ability. We have very smart students, we have students that are not well prepared, you have to find the way to be a good teacher to all of them. And, very importantly, to teach students with varying levels of commitment. Some of them will be parents and have three or four children, some of them will work full time, others will just do their attending college will be their only responsibility. You have to be flexible to accommodate all those students. And then, finally, potential for service. Outreach is important, here we're the only institution of higher education in the whole region and there aren't many cultural opportunities so the faculty have to do that; go to high schools and motivate students to pursue university studies. Mentoring is very important, I already mentioned that in the context of research. We have programs to mentor the children of agricultural workers for examples. We have a significant population and that's important. And advising. In my university advising is done by faculty, we don't have professional advisors, so that's important and I think I already spoke a little too much so I'll stop there.

[Orlando Taylor]: No! That's great, thank you, thank you all very much. Give the panelists a hand please. What I'd like to do now, we have about 15 minutes, is just to kind of summarize a few points I think you heard. You can see that these institutions all have a pretty hefty emphasis on service. The algorithm was slightly different perhaps, but still it was a value there that was not marginalized as it is often in research universities. Number two, you heard teaching was being very important, and connectivity with students. Dr. Mack's comment about cultural awareness is a very important one, I think probably in all the cases here. Understanding of the students. I'm glad Dr. Watson mentioned the diversity of her students, and we have not talked a good deal, a great deal about that, but that is a norm. In particular, my own university, Howard University is at the graduate level, 22% of all the graduate students are international students. They come from almost 100 countries around the world. If you look at some departments of the university, while it's a historically Black institution, African Americans are a minority. Both on the faculty and in the student body. So there's great diversity within these institutions, a point I tried to make when I made my brief remarks earlier today.

[Katherine Friedrich]: This podcast was produced by the Center for the Integration of Research Teaching and Learning. This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers 0227592. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.