Just over 10 years after releasing a groundbreaking report on the status of their women faculty, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has made public a much-anticipated review of their small community of underrepresented minority faculty in an effort to shed light on the need for greater diversity within the MIT professoriate. The importance of faculty diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields cannot be overstated. Faculty represent the face of their institution and carry a great responsibility in that they exemplify, in the eyes of many students, the profile of individuals that successfully generate and disseminate knowledge.
A key strategy to increasing diversity in STEM majors is increasing the number of tenured faculty who stand at the front of STEM classrooms. Furthermore, growing the number of diverse faculty translates into the expansion of learning through diversity of thought, pedagogy, and life experiences. As higher education scholars have repeatedly shown, diverse learning environments not only result in positive learning outcomes, but they are critical to sustaining a democratic citizenry.
MIT is a leader among both highly selective and technical institutions when it comes to undergraduate diversity, with one quarter of the class of 2013 representing students from underrepresented minority backgrounds (and, laudably, 45 percent women). Yet, U.S.-born minority faculty represent just 3.5 to 4 percent of the more than 1,000 professors employed by the university.
As one of the world’s preeminent contributors to innovative thought and scientific discovery, MIT is in a position of national responsibility to not only assert the need for racial and ethnic diversity in STEM, but to create the change that other selective campus leaders should seek to emulate.
