The number of black and women faculty members at Northwestern climbed to a new high this year, according to a report released recently by NU’s Faculty Diversity Committee.
But despite rising diversity, black professors still account for less than 3 percent of the total faculty, and women make up about 23 percent — numbers that indicate the university has a long way to go before the diversity of its faculty matches the diversity of its student population.
Although the committee brought attention to the issue of faculty diversity, the university must continue its commitment to recruiting and retaining minority faculty, said Richard Morimoto, dean of the Graduate School and a committee member.
“We now need to sustain what was accomplished in the last year,” he said.
With the arrival of 11 black faculty members and the departure of only three since Sept. 1, 2001, the number of black faculty at NU reached 31, its highest since the university began tracking the data in 1987. The number of women tenure and tenure-track faculty members also reached a new peak this school year at 276.
The number of Latino faculty members increased as well, from 23 to 26, although it did not reach the 1997 high of 28.
Provost Lawrence Dumas, who served as chairman of the Faculty Diversity Committee, called representative diversity “an important ambition for the university.”
The committee analyzed demographic data from NU and peer institutions, conducted exit interviews of departing women and minority faculty members and recommended initiatives to help the university reach its goals.
Initiatives proposed by the committee and other groups throughout the university were funded by $1 million from the provost’s office. Through the end of the 2001-02 academic year, $400,000 from the fund was committed to 14 projects, some of which will last for several years.
In exit interviews the committee found few common reasons for leaving cited by outgoing faculty members, said Penelope Peterson, dean of the School of Education and Social Policy and a committee member.
“There’s not a pattern,” she said. “That’s what makes it hard to retain individual faculty — because people have different needs.”
The report, however, noted that some departing faculty members cited “the importance of providing adequate child care resources.”
But Dumas said he did not think child care issues alone would stop faculty members from coming to NU, especially after the university launched its new child care initiative this fall in partnership with Evanston’s McGaw YMCA, 1000 Grove St.
“My very strong impression is that for the people who don’t come here, child care is not the major issue,” he said. “But I don’t doubt, in some cases, it could have been an important factor.”
Committee members said having numerous minority faculty members in each department was necessary to create a culture of acceptance within those departments at the university.
“You sort of want to have a critical mass so people don’t feel like they’re the only African-American faculty member here or the only Native American faculty member here,” Peterson said. “And I don’t know if we’ve reached that point.”
Morimoto said NU must work to build on the gains in minority faculty recruitment this year by mentoring new faculty and maintaining a high level of visibility and accountability for continued recruitment efforts.
Recently Morimoto has worked with NU graduate students and departments, as well as partner institutions, to develop partnerships for mentoring and training graduate students interested in faculty positions.
With an increased focus on support for minority graduate students, NU is making a long-term investment in faculty members of the future, Dumas said.
“On the one hand, we want the immediate impact of having minority faculty members here now,” he said. “If you take a long-term look at the problem, you realize you have an obligation to increase the pool of applicants.”
