Working Together to Diversify the Senior Faculty Ranks

Many colleges and universities strive to create equitable and inclusive workplaces, yet qualified faculty from marginalized groups (including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, women, and others with intersecting, marginalized identities) often face barriers that prevent them from seeking or achieving promotion to full professor. As the AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2023–24, documents, the percentages of women and individuals from underrepresented minority groups decreases with progression through the faculty ranks: as of fall 2022, barely a third (35.2 percent) of tenured full professors were women, and only 8.8 percent of all full professors were from underrepresented minority groups, according to AAUP analysis of federal data. We, as faculty members from marginalized groups, experienced such challenges firsthand. Each of us had strong bodies of work for promotion. We understood that attaining the rank of full professor was required to advance our careers and move into leadership positions. But we also had deeply internalized the narrative that we needed to be “twice as good” as our white, senior, male colleagues. Furthermore, academic spaces often devalue the work of marginalized faculty. This devaluing of one’s own work compounds the external barriers that slow or prevent advancement through the professorial ranks.

Among those barriers are a lack of appropriate recognition for research and scholarship that does not conform to the dominant paradigm and an undervaluing of teaching and pedagogical research. Faculty from marginalized groups are often expected to do unrecognized and invisible service for the institution and the community—work that is important but is not consistently or properly valued for promotion and impedes career advancement by leaving less time for traditional research and scholarship. These barriers are deeply embedded in academic structures, procedures, and processes of evaluation. 

Another key factor is the lack of robust and effective mentoring at all levels. Additionally, informal networking opportunities often benefit and privilege white men over marginalized faculty. Networks act as a form of mentoring and provide access to a “hidden curriculum” that reflects the “implicit academic, social, and cultural messages,” “unwritten rules and unspoken expectations,” and “unofficial norms, behaviors and values” of the dominant culture. Those without easy access to this hidden curriculum are at a disadvantage.

Peer-Mentoring Team

We formed a peer-mentoring team at St. John’s University in 2020 to interrupt established norms and provide support for faculty applying for promotion to full professor in the sciences. This team allowed us to address three obstacles to promotion: (1) imposter syndrome, (2) lack of formalized mentorship, and (3) structural barriers. 

Imposter Syndrome

Going up for promotion requires confidence that your body of work is “enough” and makes you worthy of promotion. Our peer-mentoring team had implicitly undervalued our work in relation to the more “traditional” scholarly work of our white male colleagues for years. Our discussions created space for us to recognize that we had done enough to merit promotion. We reflected on the dynamics that lead many marginalized faculty to experience the deep self-doubt that is often referred to as “imposter syndrome.” These dynamics affected each of us differently because of our different identities, fields of study, and schools and departments. 

Mentoring

Without effective mentorship, it becomes difficult for many faculty to navigate departmental, institutional, and structural expectations and to surmount the barriers to tenure and promotion. This problem is further complicated by the disparate experiences of faculty applying through different departments or colleges; even with the same written requirements, the unwritten requirements for promotion differ by department and an individual’s background and discipline. We had to understand all of the nuances of the process of applying for promotion to full professorship, and proactive mentorship helped us identify them.

We held an information session with a group of twenty associate professors who were eligible for promotion to discuss what we knew about the process and to offer the opportunity to work together. That discussion illuminated inconsistencies and gaps in our knowledge about the policies and procedures for applying for promotion.

Before we started our peer-mentoring team, we did not all understand how to navigate these existing policies and procedures or how to decide whether to apply for promotion to full professor. Through our grassroots effort, we created support structures to guide these decisions. We used resources from the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity to inform our approach to faculty mentoring, ensuring that there was space to provide feedback and emotional support. We developed a holistic peer-to-peer mentoring process to encourage one another, hold one another accountable for deadlines, and review and offer feedback on our colleagues’ promotion packages and presentations. In many cases, the combined knowledge of the group helped to open blocked pathways. We believe this model could be applied at any institution.

Structural Barriers

The barriers to reaching full professorship are not always obvious. Some overt barriers include colleagues who discourage applications or demean certain types of teaching, research, and service; lack of transparency regarding who is eligible for announced internal funding opportunities; and lack of support for identifying resources for research and for collaborative scholarship. Further barriers include inconsistent interpretation of stated requirements for number of papers published, types of certifications earned, funding, and types of grants obtained as well as guidance regarding external reviewers. In addition, inappropriate interpretation of the requirements, including weighing journal impact factors or devaluing where the research is published, even when it is published in the best journal in its field, can negatively affect the candidate.

University standards are often too narrowly defined, and promotion committees frequently lack the expertise to evaluate promotion packages that go beyond the defined standards for publications, presentations, and grants. To achieve promotion, applicants need to address and meet the expectations of the personnel committees. At the departmental level, the long-established standards within a particular field may limit the definition of who is qualified for promotion to full professor and may include only types of research, publications, or grants that replicate the existing structures. 

In our collaborative group, all of us had achieved tenure eight to fifteen years before we applied for promotion. We had internalized the message that we would not meet the expectations for full professor. Many of us also had the sense that there was an unwritten rule that “scholarship of teaching and learning” (SoTL) would not be valued in promotion decisions. Furthermore, in our experience, grants that were equity-centered and aligned with the stated university mission regarding diversity and inclusion were less valued than standard research grants. After achieving tenure, the faculty in our group all had established substantial records of service to the university. We also maintained our external professional commitments and continued to publish papers and receive grants. One challenge we faced was the lack of recognition that work on such grants and experience running major programs are, in fact, scholarship and not simply extracurricular activities.

A Group Process

Each of us had to decide that we were ready to apply for promotion to full professor. We outlined the promotion process, the protocols, and the deadlines, noting differences between departments and schools or colleges. 

As part of our group process, we provided one another with summative and formative feedback and strategic guidance to ensure that we each submitted a cohesive promotion package. We helped one another overcome our discomfort with self-promotion. Our portfolio narratives specifically defined the lens through which our scholarship, teaching, and service should be viewed and addressed how our work met the university’s standards for promotion. We encouraged one another to frame our accomplishments in the context of our institution’s mission. We ensured that the list of external reviewers reflected the scope of our scholarship and our professional contributions to the academy. Finally, the peer-mentoring team also provided a forum to practice our oral presentations to the committees, which our institution offers at every level. 

Our community affirmed that our achievements made us worthy of promotion. Our publications in the field of SoTL, for example, clearly had merit, and nonstandard research grants counted and had made an impact. We developed a narrative to help the personnel committees understand the context for our jointly authored publications. We also emphasized the respected service work we had done for the college, the university, and professional organizations, which we had previously overlooked. At the end of our process we were all promoted to full professor.

Our experience proves how forming a faculty career advancement community that centers faculty from marginalized groups can be a successful and scalable model, even after accounting for differences in requirements for promotion across institutions. Peer-mentoring teams provide a safe setting for questioning and discussing reasons to apply for promotion, refuting weak arguments against applying for promotion and bolstering colleagues’ confidence. Promotion is not a zero-sum game, and peer-mentoring teams should dispel any notion that there are only a fixed number of full professor positions available.

Conclusion

Institutions must acknowledge and dismantle structural barriers within promotion systems. They must endeavor to build new promotion systems that allow for fully valuing the academic pursuits and scholarly work of all members of the academy and the flourishing of those who have been systematically and historically marginalized. In the current system, for example, promotion packages are often judged by the number of monographs authored and the number of papers published as lead author or principal investigator, making coauthored papers undervalued in some fields and discouraging collaboration. Tenure and promotion committees should consider collaborations and interdisciplinary work valuable and embrace a more flexible approach to promotion standards. In our case, we needed to contextualize our accomplishments for these committees in order to ensure that they had a full picture of our contributions to the institution’s mission and stated goals. 

In academe, the dominant white culture focuses on the individual; competition and self-reliance are highly valued. These cultural norms are deeply embedded in the promotion process, where asking for guidance and building a collaborative community are discouraged. Everyone can benefit from a more transparent, accessible, and collective approach. If we want a more diverse professoriate, then we need to disrupt the status quo and provide various forms of support for all candidates. 

To increase the diversity of full professors, we recommend that faculty consider implementing the following initiatives:

• Host broad post-tenure discussions for faculty to review and discuss what is needed for a successful promotion application. Allow for interdisciplinary collaboration in this effort.
• Create learning opportunities for equity-minded practices in mentoring and faculty development to address topics such as imposter syndrome, bias, and microaggressions.
• Coach faculty on how to construct a narrative about their accomplishments that aligns with their institution’s missions and goals.

We also recommend the following initiatives to promotion committees:

• Ensure that tenure and promotion committees are provided with anti-oppression training so that they are able to use an inclusive lens when evaluating promotion packages.
• Using an inclusive lens, assist committees in broadening and strengthening their understanding of what qualifies for promotion.
• Ensure that there is a formative and summative evaluative process for faculty applying for promotion.

Finally, we recommend the following institutional initiatives:

• Form peer-support systems and institutionalize mentorship for faculty applying for promotion.
• Expand the definitions of what counts for promotion to include the scholarship of teaching and learning, new digital and media production, and major service to the university, professional organizations, and associations.
• Invest in internal resources (faculty development centers, faculty financial incentives, course releases for peer-mentoring programs, and so on) and external resources such as those provided through the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity to ensure that all faculty have the opportunity to succeed.

In ongoing discussions about increasing equity, inclusion, and diversity efforts, institutions must be clear and systematic in communicating about standards and requirements for promotion and address barriers that are subconsciously internalized by many faculty. Focused mentoring and active encouragement for career advancement is one way to expand the professoriate and diversify the senior faculty ranks.

Working together allowed us to confront the barriers that were holding us back, and our internal discussions permitted us to evaluate our own work in a new light. We created a space which allowed us to openly name our experience as marginalized faculty, and we affirmed, appreciated, and applauded one another. In validating our shared experience, we felt less isolated. This opportunity opened new avenues for cross-disciplinary collaborations and research directions. Part of our discovery was that we are enough and we had enough. We have grown as scholars and expanded our thinking while interrupting the dominant narrative of what a full professor looks like.

Manouchkathe Cassagnol is a clinical professor in the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at St. John’s University. She a is board-certified as both a pharmacotherapy specialist and a cardiology pharmacist and was recently elected as a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association. She also serves as the founding and executive director of the Academic Center for Equity and Inclusion, a faculty-led initiative created to address personal and professional development needs of faculty members. Alison Hyslop is professor of chemistry and associate dean of graduate studies in St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on faculty development to enhance academic opportunities for undergraduate STEM students. Paula Kay Lazrus is a professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St. John’s University and holds joint appointments in the Institute of Core Studies and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She is an archaeologist working in southern Calabria with research focusing on nineteenth-century land use and is currently the chair of the Education Committee of the New York State GIS Association.