Pathways to the Professoriate is a new initiative that is being launched by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Minority Serving Institutions (CMSI) thanks to a $5.1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The initiative comes amid ongoing national efforts to figure out how to increase the number of Latino professors in the classroom. Although Latinos between the ages of 18 and 44 make up 20 percent of the population, they are only 4.1 percent of the overall professoriate in the United States.
“This is not a problem that can be fixed overnight,” says Dr. Marybeth Gasman, director of CMSI.
“We see this program as a way to begin a fundamental change. We hope this creates a strong pathway to graduate school for Latino students that will grow over time, with these students supporting one another and one day becoming mentors themselves.”
According to Gasman, CMSI will partner with three HSIs — Florida International University; the University of Texas at El Paso; and California State University, Northridge — and five majority institutions — New York University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Pennsylvania; Northwestern University; and the University of California, Davis.
Over the five-year program, about 90 HSI undergraduate students will participate in summer research programs, conferences and receive mentorship as they apply to and enroll in graduate school.
