Facing the problem

ASEE Prism, Oct 2002 by Mannix, Margaret

Everyone knows that engineering education has trouble attracting women, African-Americans, and Hispanics to its ranks. Now, a new study shows just how had the problem is.

Those are just a few of the words used to describe the puny number o minority faculty members at colleges of engineering across the country.Given te actual statistics, those terms could be considered mild. According to the American Society for Engineering Education last year women comprised 8.9 percent of tenure/tenure-track faculty in engineering schools. The percentage of Hispanic professors in the same category was 2.9, while African-American professors comprised 2.1 percent. Of course, the dearth is no surprise to leaders in engineering academia and industry, many of whom have strived to increase those rates for several years. But adressing the minority deficit has never been at a more critical juncture. "What was once a moral obligaiton to promote diversity by providing equal opportuniry for interesting, high-paying careers for all citizens is now a national imperative," Kristina Johnson, dean of Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering, told Congress in July. "Simply put unless we bring more women and minorities into science and engineering fields, we will not have the intellectual capital to address the major economic, environmental, health, and security issues facing our nation. Developing our underutilized human resources can be our competitive advantage.

There does seem to be a ray of hope on the horizon. In 2001, the prevalence of female assistant professors was measured at 18 percent. While not an earth-shattering figure, the rate does signify that colleges of engineering are moving in the right direction.

Most everyone associated with engineering in higher education agrees that the root of the problem lies in the abysmally low number of females and minorities that graduate from Ph.D. programs each year. "You cannot increase the faculty overnight if you don't have the available pool from which to pull,"says Eugene DeLoatch, dean of the School of Engineering at Morgan State University. Thankfully, many colleges of engineering, professional groups, and industry members have been working hard to up the ranks of doctoral graduates (see box).

Still, increasing graduate enrollment is a longterm solution. What can colleges of engineering do now to increase the diversity of their staffs? "I think institutions just have to get real," says John Brooks Slaughter, president and CEO of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. "They can't do business as usual and expect that it is going to attract minority faculty members. It is not easy."

You can say that again. Whether small or large, public or private, colleges of engineering say increasing diversity among their faculty is a major goal. Even those schools that have records others envy are struggling. "We have done much better in hiring women than we have in hiring minorities;' says Narl Davidson, associate dean of engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. "The number of women we have hired has continued to increase, and we are now over 10 percent." But it's not the same story with African-Americans and Hispanics. "We have pretty much plateaued at a pretty low level,"says Davidson. "The competition is stiffer, and we need to ratchet it up a little."

Unfortunately, no one can provide a road map to a diverse faculty roster. Instead, engineering deans, chairs, and committees tasked with recruiting try a little of this and a little of that, tossing what fails and fine-tuning what seems promising. "Everybody's feeling their own way," says David Wormley, dean of the College of Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. That may mean rethinking the status quo. "Faculty hiring is the most traditional, most conservative, and most out of date of processes of any processes we use in universities," says Richard Tapia, professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University's George R. Brown School of Engineering.

RECRUITING 101

Denice Denton, dean of the University of Washington's College of Engineering, has found success in going back to square one. "One of the key issues is that in academia we tend not to be very good at human resource-related issues-not just in engineering but in all of academia," says Denton. "We don't tend to build the skills among faculty that they are going to need to take on greater responsibilities down the line."

Take the four to six members of your average search committee, says Denton. Maybe they've been on such a committee before, but maybe not. "How will they know how to do it?" asks Denton. " I am in no way denigrating the talent of the faculty. If you don't provide people with skills and they are just winging it, they are not going to do as good a job as if they are provided with information and skills." That's why the University of Washington has developed a "Faculty Recruitment Toolkit," which explains the nuts and bolts of a faculty search-with an emphasis on diversifying the applicant pool.