More than 1,000 Doctoral Scholars, Mentors Gather to Focus on Completing Ph.D., Curbing Minority Faculty Shortage

The Compact for Faculty Diversity’s 16th Annual Institute on Teaching and Mentoring will draw minority doctoral students, faculty members and others from across the country for four days of networking, leadership training, professional development, job recruitment and more. Featuring dozens of workshops and prominent speakers, the Institute focuses national attention on the need to raise the number of minority faculty members across the South and the rest of the nation.

The Atlanta-based nonprofit Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) will host the event along with the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE), based in Boulder, Colorado, and participating colleges, universities and state agencies.

Many scholars at the Institute are participants in the SREB-State Doctoral Scholars Program, SREB’s nationally recognized initiative to encourage more racial/ethnic minority doctoral students to pursue a career in academia. The Doctoral Scholars Program has provided assistance to more than 900 doctoral students since it began in 1993, and 79 percent now work in education. Students must gain admission to doctoral programs on their own merit to be eligible for the highly successful program in one of the 16 SREB member states.

When the SREB program began, there were very few minority faculty members in the 16-state SREB region outside the region’s historically black colleges and universities. Today, about 5 percent of the professors at public four-year colleges in the United States are black, about 3 percent are Hispanic and about 1 percent are Native American — despite the fact that about one-third of America’s college students are people of color.

To learn more about the minority faculty shortage nationally and in your state, and to connect with minority Ph.D.-level students, graduates and faculty members from your state, contact SREB Communications.

The Southern Regional Education Board, or SREB, based in Atlanta, was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. More information is available online at www.sreb.org.