KU grapples with diverse faculty retention
In the past year, the University of Kansas has grappled with the loss of a number of faculty members leaving to join other universities, an exodus some say is the result of KU’s inadequate measures for retaining underrepresented faculty and students.
When the University of Kansas downsized its office dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion and placed it under the guise of Provost Barbara Bichelmeyer, KU’s constituents questioned its dedication to recruiting and retaining faculty and students of color. While faculty, staff and students have probed KU on its faculty retention, Bichelmeyer has acknowledged the issue and is trying to clean up the situation, she said.
About 29% of KU’s 8,356 faculty and staff are not white — 956 are international, 495 are Asian, 495 are Hispanic, 315 are Black or African American and 51 are American Indian or Alaska native, according to KU’s Analytics, Institutional Research and Effectiveness data from fall 2021. And those numbers are only slightly different for the 23,958 students at KU — of the 32% of students who aren’t white at KU, 1,723 are international, 1,304 are Asian, 2,073 are Hispanic, 1,091 are Black or African American and 127 are American Indian or Alaska native.
“For Black students, all of us could literally fit in one of the big lecture halls on campus and still have room,” said Student Body President Niya McAdoo.
Higher education historically has had a problem with retaining faculty who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) especially due to heavier burdens placed on those faculty, according to a survey of underrepresented faculty members by Inside Higher Ed who left their universities. A study conducted in 2019 by University of California at Los Angeles’ Higher Education Research Institute found that “faculty of color and female faculty disproportionately experience stress due to discrimination and feel they have to work harder than their colleagues to be perceived as a legitimate scholar.”
The problem is partially rooted in inaction, said Shannon Portillo, a professor at KU in the School of Public Affairs and Administration.
“One of our struggles at KU is that sometimes our words don’t match our actions. So, we have a lot of rhetoric around support for DEI and even added the word ‘belonging’ to DEI, but when we look at actions behind that, we actually saw the dismantling of the diversity and equity unit on our campus,” Portillo said. “We see the number of people of color dwindling, which I think is really kind of demonstrating what the feeling of our institution is.”
The number of underrepresented faculty who receive tenure at KU is low. Only 1.3% of tenured faculty at KU are Black women — at Kansas State University, that number is about 1.7%, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Nationally, about 3% of Black women at public and private four-year colleges were tenured in 2018, according to the American Association of University Professors.
Awarding more faculty of color at KU tenure would help KU retain more faculty of color, and would allow those faculty to critique the university’s treatment of its constituents without fear of repercussions, Portillo said.
“When we shift leadership roles from tenured faculty positions to staff positions, then we really take away some of the protections of tenure so they can kind of speak truth to power, in particular when we’re thinking about issues of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Portillo said. “If say Jennifer Hamer or Jennifer Ng, two tenured faculty members who were VPs of diversity and equity, if they were let go from their administrative positions, they would still have a faculty position. But when we have staff in those roles, then they really do serve at the pleasure of the upper administrators so they have less structural power to be able to push back against policies or practices that may harm the retention of faculty of color on our campus.”
Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Belonging
In December, KU rebranded its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. The office was placed under the supervision of the provost’s office, while offices dedicated to diversity on campus — including the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Center for Sexuality and Gender Diversity — were moved to Student Affairs.
While reorganizing the DEIB office, two faculty members in the Office of Multicultural Affairs were fired. KU did not disclose the reasons for the firings and continue to deny disclosure, citing personnel matters.
In February, Bichelmeyer announced that each department or school must have its own strategic diversity plan in addition to KU’s plan. In an interview with the Kansan, Bichelmeyer said she expects plans from each school by the end of the academic year.
KU’s framework for diversity and equity will be shared with a steering committee and advisory council by the end of the calendar year and implementation will begin shortly thereafter, she said.
The Kansan emailed spokesmen for every dean to ask what plans they were working on to retain underrepresented faculty.
The School of Education and Human Sciences developed a hiring plan with its executive director for diversity and equity aimed at recruiting and retaining diverse faculty that the university now follows, said Rick Ginsberg, dean of the School of Education and Human Sciences.
“We don’t yet have a formalized plan in place but we have a very active assistant dean in charge of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. We are the ones that made a hiring plan that the university now has that makes sure we have robust protocols that try to put you on the path of hiring more diverse faculty,” Ginsberg said in an interview with the Kansan. “We assign mentors for each faculty members who meet with faculty members as regular as possible to determine what needs each faculty may need provided.”
No other dean representative responded to the Kansan’s requests for comment.
And while individual departments are working to improve their diversity, the move of educational offices committed to diversity at KU to Student Affairs made it seem as though KU’s dedication to diversity did not span to its faculty and staff, Portillo said.
“We have a lot of rhetoric around support for DEI and even adding the word ‘belonging’ to DEI, but when we look at the actions behind that, we actually saw the dismantling of the diversity and equity unit on our campus, which sends a pretty clear message to faculty and staff of color as far as how much they really do belong in the institution,” Portillo said.
Bichelmeyer said the reason for moving those departments, such as the SGD Center and the OMA, were because “the Office of Diversity and Equity was previously really concerned on students and student programming and student activities, and there was very minimal work being done to support faculty or staff.” KU moved Jennifer Ng to a position as vice provost for faculty development to assess the needs of faculty and staff, Bichelmeyer said.
Ng is working to indentify “hotspots” on campus to address where more work is needed to improve conditions for diversity, Bichelmeyer said. Bichelmeyer directed the Kansan to Ng for her findings.
“The most important thing I can say philosophically is that the culture shift we’re trying to create is that it’s not an office of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and one vice provost who are responsible for making this a more inclusive, more diverse, equitable, inclusive space,” Bichelmeyer said. “It’s everybody’s job, the provost and vice provost are responsible for organizing it and leading so that we get it done.”
Improving retention
To retain its faculty and students of color, Student Body President McAdoo said KU must continuously show up for its underrepresented communities in a way that it hasn’t before.
“We got the email over the summer about George Floyd and how terrible these things are, how police brutality is horrible, but not one time in that email that came from the provost and the chancellor did they say, ‘We’re committed to our Black community at KU, we’re committed to supporting them, we’re committed to meeting with them and all of their different entities,’” McAdoo said. “I feel like when it comes to the issues we see regarding Black people at KU, we’re not actively included or involved in these things, and we’re very much generalized into the ‘person of color’ group.”
“If you can’t even say, ‘We support our Black communities on campus,’ then how do you expect us to trust you to come have conversations with you about what our community needs,” they continued.
KU should require DEI training for all faculty and staff, Portillo and McAdoo said, something it still does not mandate. However, Bichelmeyer said such training will be required by the end of the semester.
The university will also now conduct mandatory exit surveys for employees who are leaving KU and will implement mandatory supervisor training, which will include extensive bystander intervention training.
“We see the demographics of our nation changing and we also know that that’s happening in Kansas. So, as we look to continuing to educate future generations, we want to make sure that we have faculty and staff that reflect the students that we’re educating,” Portillo said. “I think that really it’s the intellectual diversity that comes from having people with diverse lived experiences and diverse backgrounds that really helps create a world-class education.”
Note: Numbers have been updated to accurately reflect the native students and faculty population