Dive Brief:
- The “HSI Pathways to the Professorate” program is aiming to help introduce Hispanic students enrolled in institutions where at least 25% of the undergraduate student population is Hispanic to opportunities and training that can help lead to careers in academia, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- The project was created by the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions at the Penn Graduate School of Education, and it serves both male and female students from partner institutions Cal State at Northridge, Florida International University and the University of Texas at El Paso. The project hopes to help close a massive gap in faculty demographics, as only 5% of undergraduate educators are currently Hispanic.
- The creators of the project said they focused on HSIs because they wanted to widen the breadth of where potential professors can emanate, and the project offers participants a summer stipend as well as GRE prep and graduate school application fees, along with available mentors, an online networking “lodge” and weekly seminars held by Hispanic graduate students.
Dive Insight:
Research indicates that students of color enrolled in colleges and universities achieve greater outcomes when they find they are represented in faculty and staff on campus. A Brookings University policy brief showed that a teacher of the same race can have a “small but meaningful” effect on test scores, and other research indicated that dropout rates fell significantly for black students who had been taught by at least one black educator. In K-12 education, schools, districts and non-profits that offer alternative certification like Teach for America have realized they are at a detriment without a more sizable percentage of educators of color, as those gaps can be damaging to student outcomes as well as assessments of the institution’s proficiency in student and professional development.
The fact that a diverse educator workforce seems to lead to more positive outcomes should encourage all district and school leaders to perform more substantive outreach to develop more teachers and school leaders of color. The benefits of diversification, and the consequences of a lack of diversity, are increasing for educators and administrators in both K-12 and higher ed. For example, some colleges and universities are taking professors’ advocacy for equity under consideration when determining whether someone should receive tenure, and New York Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña has initiated an outreach program to interest K-12 students in a career track that will lead to them educating students in the same neighborhoods in which they were schooled.
The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act will also offer insight into the inequities in spending between schools at the district level, which will likely illustrate that schools serving students from low-income families and students of color are disproportionately low-funded. Diversifying the workforce can help mitigate these inequities, boosting achievement outcomes in the schools and communities most in need.