 "Photo: Jason Sweeten | Daily Texan Staff")
While UT has made significant strides in improving campus diversity since integration in the 1950s, women and minority faculty members still struggle to advance and carve a niche in the predominately male, white environment.
Men constitute 64.4 percent of UT faculty, while women make up 35.6 percent, according to the Office of Institutional Research. While women represent barely more than one-third of UT's faculty population, they represent even smaller numbers in the best paid positions.
While many faculty attribute this discrepancy to some women's tendency to invest more time in family responsibilities than men, Gretchen Ritter, director of the UT Center for Women's and Gender Studies, said other major factors include implicit and explicit sex discrimination and a predominately male environment.
The University is not only predominately male, but predominately white as well. UT faculty members are 83.4-percent white, 7.5-percent Asian, 5.3-percent Hispanic, 3.2-percent black and 0.5-percent American Indian, according to the Office of Institutional Research. These percentages are nowhere near state demographics.
"The numbers speak for themselves," said Margarita Arellano, associate dean of students and a member of UT's Latino Leadership Council. "Although we have progress, there's a lot of work to be done."
Associate government professor and Vice Provost Terri Givens said, when reading her classroom evaluations, she factors in her belief that students lower their evaluations of her, just because she is a "young-looking, black female."
"As a woman and a minority, there's all kinds of issues that you face that basically your average white male doesn't," Givens said.
Male students may make inappropriate remarks and can be disrespectful, making it more difficult for a professor to develop authority in the classroom, Givens said.
The Center for Women's and Gender Studies works to retain female faculty through a faculty mentorship program. The three-year-old interdisciplinary program pairs senior faculty with new faculty members to familiarize them with the campus culture and help them network.
President William Powers identified diversity as a key initiative in his state of the University address in September. Powers appointed Gregory Vincent as vice president of diversity and community engagement to make that goal a reality.
Vincent said he works with colleges and departments at the University to help them diversify their faculty and graduate student body. The process requires not just seeking out and hiring diverse faculty, but retaining them amid a predominately white male faculty.
"Women and minority faculty are at greater risk of not being retained," Ritter said. "In part, because they're isolated. If you're the only woman at a faculty meeting, you kind of wonder what you're doing there."
Often women and minorities see their white male counterparts developing relationships and intellectual networks, from which they often feel excluded, she said. The University needs to make sure it makes minority faculty members feel welcome, she said.
Keffrelyn Brown, assistant education professor and mentoree in the faculty mentorship program, emphasized the importance of feeling comfortable on campus and like a member of the community who can make a contribution.
Brown, a tenure-track professor, has been meeting with her mentor Jacqueline Woolley, a tenured psychology professor, since she started at UT this fall.
Faculty diversity impacts what students learn, Arellano said.
"People come with different perspectives, different views and all of that can only enrich the fabric of knowledge," Arellano said. "We have to serve everybody, we have to reflect everybody, we have to take into consideration different points of view, backgrounds and histories."
Additional reporting by Alex Au.
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