Salaries and Mentorship are Key to Recruiting and Retaining Faculty at Small, Private HBCUs

May 2020 was a pivotal time for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The pandemic was exacting a brutal toll on the communities HBCUs often serve, and the prominent murders of George Floyd and others were turning national attention to the importance of Black colleges.

That month, Latrice Johnson graduated from Tougaloo College, a small, private HBCU in Jackson, Miss. Like so many others, Johnson found herself thinking about the renewed focus on HBCUs, the stories they were continuing the tell and the stories that might not be getting attention. In the last year of undergraduate study, one of her professors left to accept a position at nearby Jackson State University, a larger, public HBCU.

Latrice Johnson is currently pursuing her master's degree in English at the University of Mississippi.“It made me think what retention and recruitment looks like at these smaller colleges,” said Johnson. “The demographics of the professors [at Tougaloo] I can recall, a lot of them had been there for over 30 years. So, what does that mean, being there for so long, what does it look like to recruit younger scholars, junior faculty, and how do you keep your professors here? What do they need?”

Johnson was able to ask and answer that question the following year by participating in the John Smartt Summer Scholars internship at the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions (CMSI) at Rutgers Graduate School of Education. The six-week program recruits master’s degree students with an interest in working with or learning more about MSIs.

With guidance from CMSI leaders like Dr. Marybeth Gasman, executive director of CMSI, Johnson put together a research brief studying six private HBCUs across the county. Johnson said she was surprised by the lack of recent research on faculty at private HBCUs and is hopeful that her brief will inspire more targeted surveys. She concluded that faculty are recruited not only with competitive salaries but also through professional development and mentorship opportunities.

Finding competitive salaries can be difficult at smaller, private institutions, most particularly at HBCUs, who battle notorious and discriminatory underfunding. Experts said they would like to see federal or even state support target faculty directly, and they encouraged small HBCUs to promote the student-centered work their faculty does.

Despite having fewer resources, Dr. Travis C. Smith, an assistant professor of higher education and student affairs at Auburn University, said that HBCUs “make lemonade without any water, lemons, or sugar.”