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Despite significant investments in efforts to broaden participation, the number of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields who leave the academy is disheartening. Some reports suggest half of women STEM faculty will leave tenure track positions within 10 years after hire (Kaminski & Geisler, 2012). For women of color, the data are equally bleak (Ginther & Kahn, 2012) and affirm the need for continuously evolving practices and policies to retain underrepresented faculty in STEM and ensure career satisfaction and success. Unfortunately, current programs for career development and mentoring largely promote rigid conformity to traditional performance expectations, which enable the persistence of narrow departmental norms regarding markers of success. By drawing on person–environment (PE) fit theory, and combining data from our own institution with evidence-based practices from others, the authors have created a faculty development program designed to upend this practice. The objective of this program is to help faculty advance their careers in the academy while staying true to what they value, while simultaneously helping departments reflect on how they can create more inclusive and supportive environments for all faculty. The authors describe the program in detail and provide initial assessments of impact on faculty participants as well as departmental and institutional practice.

Prior to Brown v. Board of Education 1954, Black female educators played a significant and vital role in segregated schools. Despite Black female teachers’ historic presence in the field of education, presently Black female teachers are disproportionately under-represented in the US teacher workforce. Acknowledging the shortage of Black female teachers in K-12 classrooms, the purpose of this qualitative study is to explore why Black female educators teach in under-resourced, urban schools. By examining Black female educators’ initial draw to urban schools in what we conceptualized as the urban factor, we hope to reframe the implicit biases surrounding under-resourced, urban schools as less desirable workplaces and unearth reasons why those Black female teachers who enter teaching gravitate more toward urban schools. Three themes emerged about Black female teachers’ thoughts on and preference for urban schools with an unexpected finding about Black female teachers’ perceptions of student behavior. Concluding, recommendations are offered for policy and practice.

A growing number of human rights NGOs have placed international volunteers in conflict zones from Guatemala and Colombia to Palestine and Iraq. This study samples from contemporary high-risk transnational activists and highlights the variation in biographical steps taken toward the shared outcome of participation in human rights work (HRW). Data was collected through 6 weeks of participant observation in Israel-Palestine, 21 in-depth interviews, and 28 shorter focused interviews with human rights workers (N=49). Oversampling from the International Solidarity Movement reveals how the unique constraints and opportunities presented by a particular conflict zone and NGO culture impacts self-selection into HRW. Grounded theory and Boolean methodology aided in identifying four main pathways (the nonviolent activist, peace church, anarchist, and solidarity pathways) to HRW as well as biographical patterns and complexities that have been underemphasized in the existing literature. These include the salience of transformative events and attitude changes in the process of constructing a cosmopolitan identity and committing to high-risk transnational activism.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.

In this chapter, the editors provide a reflective anecdote describing the professional and personal journey which led to the production of the current volume. The chapter presents the aim and scope of the text, chapter descriptions, and the overall goal of the text which includes facilitating conversations around how historically Black colleges or universities (HBCUs) might best support underserved populations of students and faculty.