White Faculty Deal With the Challenges of Teaching at HBCUs

Jared Loggins, a senior at Morehouse College, is choosing between Ph.D. programs. He plans one day to be a professor of political science. “The hope is to get a Ph.D. and enter into the professoriate—even considering how grim the job market is for professors,” he says.

He is willing to overlook the challenges that may lie ahead for two reasons.
One, he loves the ¬field. And, two, he is acutely aware of how few Black professors there are relative to White professors. He says he hopes his voice and example might help tip the balance.

Jared Loggins is a senior at Morehouse College.Loggins says that he was surprised by how many of his Morehouse classes were taught by White men. Their prevalence underscores the need for more Black professors across the board, Loggins says.

“African-Americans have worked extremely hard, and I know I’ve worked extremely hard, to be in a position to impact scholarly spaces,” he says. “That should be wholly reflected in the academy.”

While Loggins may not have expected to encounter so many White faculty at Morehouse, which serves a nearly 100 percent Black student body, the reality is that White faculty have always had a place at HBCUs.
Some, such as Lincoln University, were founded and staffed by White teachers and ministers from their origins in the mid-to-late 1800s onward.

Despite a long history with HBCUs, the White HBCU faculty experience is infrequently written about, and there are only a handful of studies available that might shed light on White faculty’s place within HBCUs.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) keeps tabs on the race and ethnicity of almost every HBCU. NCES provided Diverse with data for 99 HBCUs in 2013. At those 99 HBCUs, 56 percent of full-time instructional staff were Black, 25 percent were White, 2 percent Hispanic and 10 percent Asian.

By point of comparison, on the national level, 79 percent of full-time instructional faculty were White, 4 percent Hispanic, and 9 percent Asian or Paci¬fic Islander, according to NCES data from 2011.
Only 6 percent of faculty were Black. Dr. Kimya Dawson- Smith’s 2006 dissertation is one of the more recent and comprehensive studies of White faculty at HBCUs. Her dissertation surveys White faculty at two HBCUs and looks at their place at the institutions from a historic perspective.