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COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Black faculty members at the University of Missouri say the school needs to reconsider retention tactics if it hopes to recruit and keep faculty of color.
The Columbia Missourian (http://bit.ly/1RcxIfU ) reports that last fall, student activist group Concerned Student 1950 demanded an increase in black faculty and staff at the university to 10 percent, up from the current 2.8 percent, by the 2017 to 2018 academic year. University officials have indicated their intention to recruit faculty of color.
But nine former faculty members told administrators in November that the effort will be all for nothing if the university can't retain them.
"There have been several assistant professors hired, and a great number of them left before their fourth year," Flore Zéphir, professor of French and director of the Afro-Romance Institute. "Something is wrong. What had happened in Columbia or in their department that made them leave as soon as they could?"
Black faculty often spend more time mentoring non-white students and faculty, making arguments for promotion, and participating on boards and committees, challenges that have been enough for some to leave.
Noelle Witherspoon Arnold, a former MU faculty member in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, left the university last semester after five years there. She said part of her decision was that she noticed what she called alarming trends of women and faculty of color hitting a ceiling when it came to job promotions and salary increases.
"There were leadership opportunities in my department, and my department was extremely supportive. However, a lot of the leadership in the college were not people of color, and I just sort of felt like there was nowhere for me personally to go as far as advancing," Arnold said.
Arnold said the hiring of Chuck Henson as the school's interim vice chancellor for inclusion, diversity and equity was fine, but "I would like to see Mizzou actually dedicate a large amount of funding specifically to diversity and inclusion and then earmarking that money for faculty retention. ... I think it's going to have to be a devotion of money and resources rather than just programming, because programming has happened and programming turns into a simple platitude."
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Information from: Columbia Missourian, http://www.columbiamissourian.com
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