Using Talent Centered Education Leadership to Create Equitable and Inclusive Workplaces for Black Male Faculty in Engineering

Abstract

Black Male faculty are severely underrepresented in public universities (Harper, 2010; Li & Koedel, 2017), especially in the department of engineering where they frequently have no representation at all (Nelson et al., 2010). The problem is often attributed (especially by employers) to a pipeline issue, suggesting a lack of a recruitment pool of Black male faculty. However, it is increasingly recognized that turnover and attrition may play a critical role in contributing to the lack of Black engineering faculty (Whittaker et al., 2015). This chapter reports results from a larger national survey of 1,161 engineering faculty at research intensive institutions, of which only 14 identified as Black males (further evidencing underrepresentation). We focus on the responses from the latter group, through a qualitative analysis of their responses to inquiries concerning barriers in their institution for tenure, research, funding, and teaching; diversity concerns; and sentiments regarding their job satisfaction and consideration for employment resignation. Issues identified by participants included feelings of isolation, exclusion and even discrimination at their workplace. Based on these concerns, we suggest talent centered education leadership (TCEL) as a guiding framework to help higher education employers improve the equity and inclusivity of their workspace by creating a more engaging environment for their Black male faculty. TCEL is a recently introduced inclusive talent management framework (Tran, 2022; Tran & Smith, 2020) that emphasizes humanizing the education workplace. Essential to that humanization is creating and maintaining a work environment where all employees feel a sense of belonging.

Citation

Tran, H. and Platt, S. (2022), "Using Talent Centered Education Leadership to Create Equitable and Inclusive Workplaces for Black Male Faculty in Engineering", Robins, A.G., Knibbs, L., Ingram, T.N., Weaver, M.N. and Hilton, A.A. (Ed.) Young, Gifted and Missing (Diversity in Higher Education, Vol. 25), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 145-162. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-364420220000025011