Dr. Marcia Allen Owens
Using the concept of cultural humility and focusing on intersectionality, the FAMU ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Initiative aims to assess and transform the institution’s climate, culture, policy and practices that have led to underrepresentation of Black women faculty, particularly in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and the social and behavioral sciences (SBS) fields.
The five-year initiative will additionally provide mentorship to 20 selected STEM and SBS women faculty fellows and develop activities and programming through a recently established Center for Faculty ADVANCEment, according to leaders.
“As the only Black woman and the first to earn tenure in Environmental Sciences at a large HBCU, I wondered why so few of us were faculty when most of our students were Black women,” said Dr. Marcia Allen Owens, associate professor of environmental science and policy, principal investigator of FAMU ADVANCE and director of the Center for Faculty ADVANCEment. “The NSF ADVANCE grant stood out as one that would help me to use research to find answers to my questions.”
Owens’ particular focus on Black women faculty’s intersecting racial and gender identities, challenges assumptions that Black women at HBCUs do not have as many problems with discrimination, implicit or explicit bias as counterparts at predominantly White institutions, for example.
“Black women’s intersectional identities are masked and subsumed in the phrase ‘women and minorities’ and what is lost is that we are Black and female at the same time,” Owens said. “There are some particularities that exist because of the combination of race and gender.”
