Attitudes and Advocacy: Understanding Faculty Views on Racial/Ethnic Diversity
Abstract
Diversity has been a hot-button issue in higher education
for the past several decades (Chang, Witt, Jones & Hakuta,
2003). A significant portion of research has been dedicated to how students
experience the campus racial climate (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-
Pederson, & Allen, 1998; Rankin & Reason, 2005), their views on policies
such as affirmative action (Sax & Arredondo, 1999), and how they
participate in diversity-related activism (Rhoads, 1998). However, less is
known about how faculty feel about diversity policies on their campuses,
how important they think diversity is to undergraduates, and their
own commitments to fostering a diverse environment (Flores & Rodriguez,
2006; American Council on Education, 2000).
Faculty play a critical role in the life of the university. They design
and teach the curriculum, conduct research that advances the existing
knowledge base, and set guidelines that determine many of the standards
for their campuses. They make up the body from which department
heads, deans, and college presidents come from. Trustees may serveterms, students cycle in and out, but once tenured, faculty are there to
stay. Because faculty play such a sustaining role in the life of the university,
it is essential to better understand their attitudes towards diversity,
especially in a time period where policies geared towards increasing access
to higher education for students of color continue to be challenged
(Chang, et al., 2003).
In order to better understand faculty attitudes towards diversity,
specifically racial/ethnic diversity, we created a composite variable that
taps into a variety of faculty attitudes towards diversity including their
commitments to promoting racial understanding and their views on the
role of diversity in undergraduate education. We refer to this variable
throughout the study as à à à ¢ Diversity Advocacy.à à à ¢ The purpose of the study
is to examine how Diversity Advocacy varies within subsets of faculty,
as well as to identify predictors of faculty attitudes regarding diversity.