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Research indicates that faculty of color in the United States face numerous challenges in the academy. To complicate their experiences further, children significantly impact academics’ work. Additional difficulties can arise in balancing work with familial responsibilities. Indeed, strategies to navigate parental obligations while engaging in professional activities are seldom examined among minority parents, across genders and institution types. In response, the current study investigates the intersectionality of race, gender, and parenthood on navigating a work–life balance in academia. This study examines 13 male and female minority parents from an array of institutions and explores their strategies for navigating professional advancement while managing familial obligations.

Our data suggest that parents of color often develop timesaving strategies to complete their work more efficiently. However, in order to do so, they tend to engage in professional and social isolation and to recalibrate personal expectations of work and accomplishments. Of importance, the study uncovered significant gender differences. While fathers faced comparable challenges, the findings indicate that familial responsibilities can disadvantage women more so by impacting their ability to foster professional relationships and potentially harm their emotional well-being. While most faculty of color face difficulties in the workplace, we argue that those with children, especially mothers, face additional challenges that should be addressed by home institutions to foster more equitable opportunities for professional growth.

Much of the research on the experiences of faculty of color makes clear the barriers such faculty face in academe. The research on women of color, while considerably less developed than that of faculty of color in general, is quite similar in pointing out the obstacles such women face in academe. Such literature does, however, seek to offer perspectives on how sexism intersects with racism to create a particularly unique context for women of color. Reporting on narratives from women of color as they relate to the research criterion in the promotion and tenure process, I seek to offer insights into how the academy traffics in race narratives, which constrains the options faculty women of color might have, but in doing so, paradoxically, open up spaces for these women to challenge social inequalities. The aim of this chapter is to move beyond the very linear notion of racism and sexism common in the literature on women of color and toward an understanding of the interplay between academic structures (i.e., the academic roles required of women of color) and individual agency (i.e., what women do with and because of these roles) in how one might account for the roles that race and gender play in academe.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a mentoring program developed at a large predominantly white research university that was aimed at retaining and advancing women faculty of color. The ADVANCE Scholar Program pairs each scholar for two years with a senior faculty member at the university who serves as an internal advocate, and with an eminent scholar outside the university who helps the scholar gain prominence in their discipline.

This paper offers a case study of the ADVANCE Scholar Program. The authors describe the intersectional approach to organizational change in this conceptual framework and provide a brief overview of the institution and precursors to the development of the Scholar program. The authors describe the program itself, its rationale, structure and participants in the program.

Overall, the program generated a positive reception and outcomes, and the authors suggest that such a program has the potential to make a positive difference in making the university a more supportive place for a diverse professoriate and recommend it as a model for adoption at other predominantly white research universities.

By publishing the operations and the outcomes of this faculty mentoring program, we expect to contribute broadly to a more supportive campus climate for a diverse professoriate. We have developed, implemented, and continue to study this successful model to retain minoritized faculty scholars in the professoriate.

Women faculty of color are often assigned to serve on committees to meet diversity objectives of the institution and are sought after by students of color from across the university, but this service is not considered. This program, the ADVANCE Scholar Program, pairs each scholar with a senior faculty member who serves as an internal advocate, and an external eminent scholar who guides the scholar in gaining national prominence. These efforts to retain and promote minoritized faculty scholars, altogether, have important implications on the pervasive issues affecting many members of academic communities at the individual, interpersonal and the institutional levels.

This case study provides an innovative strategy to tackle the lack of role models and the experiences of social isolation that occurs for women faculty of color with multiply marginalized status. Hence, women faculty of color benefit from a valuable, institutionally supported, university-wide mentoring program designed to increase diversity of minoritized faculty in the professoriate ranks.

Although progress has been made, women faculty of color (i.e. American Indian/Alaska Native, African American, Hispanic, and Asian/Asian Pacific Islanders) continues to experience a number of challenges in the academy. Without proper supports and strategies many of these women will leave the academy prematurely or will not be successful in their quest for promotion and tenure. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the challenges these women encounter, as well as the strategies they adopt in response to these challenges. In doing so, the authors argue that a strong sense of self-efficacy is a core trait of successful women faculty of color; a trait that cuts across all racial and ethnic groups. The authors conclude with implications for fostering support for women faculty of color, as well as recommendations for future research.

The role gender plays in academia has provided unique experiences and challenges for women (Hill, Leinbaugh, Bradley, & Hazler, 2005). Inequalities in salary, as well as promotion and tenure, are issues women in higher education have had to endure since their entrance into the academy. For women of color there is an additional layer to their struggles that is predicated on the impact of race and ethnicity, all synergistically affecting how women of color enter, negotiate, and are retained within academia. This chapter explores themes around the issues that require women of color to subjugate the self to succeed and find acceptance in academia. This chapter illuminates the unwritten rules that often decide the fate of women faculty of color; as well as how women of color are navigating the intersection of race and gender in academia. Feminist theoretical approaches and narrative inquiry have been employed to draw out themes from the stories of eleven women of color who currently or previously held academic positions.

As more women faculty of color enter the professoriate, they are evaluating, clashing with, and challenging old practices, while simultaneously articulating and establishing new ones (James & Farmer, 1993). To do so effectively, these women are best served by a network of mentors (Baugh & Scandura, 1999; Higgins & Kram, 2001) who can facilitate their development of career competencies, help them understand “the rules of the game” for scholarly activity, and transform the normalized construction of academic environments that is sometimes exclusionary of women faculty of color (Tillman, 2001; Young & Brooks, 2008). Mentoring networks are vital support structures in a successful academic career, as emerging scholars seek to navigate the complex and protean racial and gender dynamics of academic institutions (Sorcinelli & Yun, 2007). In this chapter, we explore issues of acclimatization of women new to the professoriate, with a particular focus on developing and sustaining effective mentoring networks for women of color. Furthermore, we examined extant research to gain insights on how women new to academe can build mentoring networks to create peer communities that advance scholarship and teaching, provide useful advice on tenure and promotion, help scholars balance personal and professional roles, and manage time. The following broad questions guided our chapter: (1) What types of mentors and mentoring relationships should early career women of color faculty should seek? (2) How are norms between protégés and mentors created, reinforced and sustained? and (3) What are the benefits of same-race/same-gender mentorships and cross-race/cross-gender mentorships?

Given the demographic shift in American society, higher education institutions are faced with the challenge to prepare students for a diverse society. Efforts to diversify the gender, racial, and ethnic makeup of faculty and administrators in universities show promise but institutional challenges threaten such progress. In this chapter, the author explores the breadth and scope of scholarship on the trends impacting women of color in higher education. Two major areas are the focus of analysis: (1) transformation of higher education since the passage of Title IX. Widely associated with athletics and now celebrating 40 years since its enactment, Title IX has been instrumental in creating access for women of diverse ethnic and racial background. Historically, Title IX is credited with closing the gender gap in higher education; but has it really?; and (2) dismantling structural and social barriers that threaten authentic inclusion of women of color. The interlocking effects of gender, race, and ethnicity can compound pressures of the workplace environment for women of color (Turner, 2002). Coupled with that are climate issues that can create an uninviting or hostile environment for women of color in faculty or administrative positions. The diversification of women of color in higher education has important implications for policy and practice, and raises important questions about institutional commitments.

This chapter focuses on the barriers women of color (WOC) in the professoriate face in their pursuit of tenure and promotion and provides selected strategies that build bridges for their success. It draws on critical race theory (CRT) to identify structural as well as individual changes that must be made in academe. The chapter addresses selected strategies for African-American, Latina American, and Asian/Pacific American women to successfully traverse the perilous road from untenured assistant professor to tenured full professor. The Newcomer Adjustment framework of the Organizational Socialization Model (OSM; Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo, & Tucker, 2007) is used as a systematic approach to addressing barriers and building bridges for WOC in the professoriate. Gaps in the research are also identified.

In this phenomenological study, the experiences of seven Black women faculty at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) who are working toward tenure and promotion are presented. The use of phenomenology, specifically in-depth interviews, gives voice to the women as they share the essence of their experiences including their perceived supports and barriers. Understanding their experiences adds to the literature on women of color in education and has the implications for schooling and community, and support structures essential to the success of Black women and all women of color in academe.

There is a paucity of research on Asian American women's progress in higher education as faculty. This chapter contextualizes Asian American women as “Other” faculty who because of their race, gender, and presumed “foreigner” background are not seen as normal faculty. In disrupting traditional student–faculty relations where White males are considered normal and hold positions of power, Asian American women as women faculty of color are subject to being contested in the classroom. I examine here their classroom experiences with attention to student resistance and faculty agency through critical feminist, race, and intersectionality frameworks.

The study is based on a secondary data analysis of qualitative studies on Asian American women's classroom experiences in predominantly White institutions. It finds that students of all racial/ethnic and gender backgrounds may resist their faculty role, oftentimes through uncivil behaviors. Students hold racial, gender, and ethnocentric stereotypes and biases of their teaching capabilities and course offerings. Teaching race–gender–class–nation courses can contribute to lower or mixed course evaluations. In claiming their rightful place, Asian American women faculty seek to make a difference through student-centered learning, innovative pedagogy, and new curricula that prepare students for a diverse and global society. They demonstrate their authenticity, authority, and agency in the ways they navigate challenging classroom situations and serve as role models for all students and faculty.