$4.5 Million Grant to Study and Reduce Bias Against Black and Hispanic Faculty in Promotion and Tenure Processes
August 23, 2024
BATON ROUGE, LA - Tracey Rizzuto, professor in the School of Leadership & Human Resource Development, is LSU PI, and Christiane Spitzmüeller, professor at UC Merced, is the lead investigator for the $4.5 million NSF grant that will create a Center for Equity in Faculty Advancement.
Tracey Rizzuto, PhD
Black and Hispanic faculty who seek promotion at research universities face career-damaging biases in the evaluation process, with their level of scholarly production judged more harshly than their peers, according to a far-reaching research program co-led by UC Merced, the University of Houston, and LSU.
Junior professors are generally evaluated and voted on for promotion and tenure by committees comprised of senior colleagues. In one of the studies conducted by the research team, results suggest that faculty from underrepresented minorities received 7% more negative votes from committees than their non-minority peers. Further, minority faculty were 44% less likely to receive unanimous approval votes. The judgment of women minority faculty was particularly harsh.
The study underscores the lack of faculty from underrepresented minorities on U.S. campuses. Blacks and Hispanics account for only 14% of the nation’s assistant professors and 8% of its full professors, while those minorities make up 30% of the U.S. population.
The effect of few minorities among faculty can trickle down to minority students, who look to their professors for inspiration and support. Learning from Black and Hispanic professors increases students’ likelihood of pursuing STEM careers or simply remaining on an academic path.
The findings, accepted for publication in the journal Nature Human Behavior, are part of ongoing research on the subject funded by two consecutive grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). A current $2 million grant focuses on identifying bias, validity, and fairness in promotion. A new $4.5 million grant will work to understand mechanisms that drive bias, along with policy and training interventions to mitigate it. These grants leverage academic inquiry from seven institutions, including UC Merced, LSU, University of Houston, Texas A&M University, Purdue University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Texas Southern University.
The research analyzed promotion and tenure decisions for 1,571 faculty members at five universities from 2015-2022. The data included promotion and tenure committee votes along with linguistic analysis of external review letters – an evaluation by an outside scholar of a candidate’s research, teaching, and service. The letters are a key part of the evaluation process. The study accounted for differences in candidate assessment from campus to campus.
Receiving a unanimous recommendation by a promotion and tenure committee is considered the gold standard for an academic, while negative votes are treated as indicators of performance that merit concern. Unfavorable votes can, but not necessarily will, affect a provost’s decision to approve a promotion. But even if the professor’s status is raised, negative votes can lead them to doubt whether they are valued as a colleague.
The study questioned the fairness and criteria behind negative votes against candidates of color. The data showed that Black and Hispanic faculty – and particularly minority women – were less likely to get the benefit of the doubt when their scholarly record was questionable, while White and Asian faculty with similar output generally received a free pass.
Until recently, conventional wisdom in academia blamed the lack of underrepresented minorities among full professors on factors such as a toxic campus atmosphere, social isolation, or a lack of professional support. The newly accepted Nature Human Behavior paper shows that gatekeeping processes and implicit bias in promotion and tenure decisions are partially to blame.
The study made recommendations to reduce promotion bias against minority faculty:
- Acknowledge and address shortcomings and blind spots in the promotion and tenure process.
- Encourage authors of external review letters to emphasize the scholarship of minority candidates.
- Conduct more research to explore discipline-specific nuances and broader impacts of these biases across different types of institutions.
About the School of Leadership & Human Resource Development
The LSU School of Leadership & Human Resource Development (SLHRD) offers programs dedicated to producing world-class practitioners, leaders, and instructors in two areas of focus: Agricultural Education and Leadership and Human Resource Development.
Visit the School of Leadership & Human Resource Development website.
About the College of Human Sciences & Education
The College of Human Sciences & Education (CHSE) is a nationally accredited division of Louisiana State University. The college comprises the School of Education, the School of Information Studies, the School of Kinesiology, the School of Leadership & Human Resource Development, and the School of Social Work. CHSE has two model demonstration schools: the Early Childhood Education Laboratory Preschool, which enrolls birth to age four, and the University Laboratory School, which enrolls kindergarten through grade 12. The college also has four centers and institutes: the Early Childhood Education Institute, the Healthy Aging Research Center, the Leadership Development Institute, and the Social Research & Evaluation Center. The college is committed to achieving the highest standards in teaching, research, and service and improving quality of life across the lifespan.