University to Study Tenure Bias Against Female, Minority Professors
OKLAHOMA CITY
The Faculty Council at Oklahoma State University will study faculty promotion, tenure and salaries for evidence of bias against female and minority professors.
The council’s Faculty Committee is designing a study comparing the university’s archived promotion, tenure and salary data to diversity factors such as race, gender and age, committee chairman Cathy Sleezer said last week.
In addition, the committee will survey current faculty members about their perceptions of the university’s promotion and tenure system, Sleezer said.
The committee announced the study after a December article in the student newspaper, The Daily O’Collegian, quoted Faculty Council President Bob Darcy as saying Black faculty members have a harder time getting reappointed and tenured than their White colleagues.
Sleezer said the study was in the works before then because of Faculty Council concerns over minority representation on campus. In the fall semester, 20 of the 1,404 faculty members at OSU-Stillwater were Black, according to the university’s institutional research office.
