African American Female Professors Experiences In An Historically Black College And University Organizational Culture

An important aspect of higher education is the mentorship of junior faculty by senior faculty. Addressing the vital role mentorship plays in an academic institution’s survival promotes more opportunities and positive learning experiences. Faculty Mentorship at Historically Black Colleges and Universities provides emerging research on the importance of recruiting, retaining, and promoting faculty within Historically Black Colleges and Universities. While highlighting specific issues and aspects of mentorship in college, readers will learn about challenges and benefits of mentorship including professional development, peer mentoring, and psychosocial support. This book is an important resource for academicians, researchers, students, and librarians seeking current research on the growth of mentorship in historically black learning institutions.

Truth Without Tears is a timely and insightful portrait of Black women leaders in American colleges and universities. Carolyn R. Hodges and Olga M. Welch are former deans who draw extensively on their experience as African American women to account for both the challenges and opportunities facing women of color in educational leadership positions. Hodges and Welch deftly combine autobiography with more general information and observations to fashion an interesting and helpful book about higher education leadership. They offer their perspectives on being the first deans of color in two predominately white institutions in an effort to fill a gap that exists in the literature on deanships in higher education. Each chapter offers reflections or examples of the authors’ particular experiences that have taught them how to become effective leaders. The book engages readers to consider ways of learning how to balance the need for action with “deliberative and deliberate approaches” that are grounded in maintaining decisiveness, accountability, and allegiance to organizational goals, especially those that support inclusiveness and diversity of perspective. A nuanced and complex depiction of successful leadership, Truth Without Tears is a valuable resource for current and aspiring higher education leaders.

A relevant and practical book for the Nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) leadership and administrators, HBCU faculty leaders and researchers that want to uncover the ways and means for cultivating success within the HBCUs longitudinally.

Experiences of Single African-American Women Professors: With this Ph.D., I Thee Wed, edited by Eletra S. Gilchrist, explores the unique lived experiences of single African-American women professors. This volume, designed by and for an academic audience, addresses the dating and mating complexities of the population under study by combining autoethnographic accounts with empirical research and theoretical concepts.

This research examines the complexities of identity negotiation for African- American female students at both Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). It analyzes the intersections of gender, and race/ethnicity (among other salient attributes of social identity) as these women define, negotiate, and communicate their identities in both organizational settings. More specifically, it examines how these students navigate the different organizational settings of both HBCUs and PWIs while simultaneously negotiating self-defined aspects of their identities with notions projected onto them in these environments. In-depth interviews with co-researchers who have experience with both types of universities reveal that negotiating stereotypes of black women and their limited visibility in the curriculum can be difficult to manage, particularly at PWIs. Although the co-researchers report feeling invisible, they interestingly also feel hyper visible when interacting with professors and peers as they often feel placed into the role of the "educator" of African-American culture. Establishing boundaries and bringing in limited aspects of social identities often helps the co-researchers mitigate negative experiences they encounter and the tension they feel between their invisibility and hyper visibility. The co-researchers enjoy more of a racial and ethnic cultural fit at HBCUs, which makes identity negotiation easier for them. Gender causes much more of a concern for them in these environments. The co-researchers often engage in uncomfortable interactions with their peers and faculty members and feel the brunt of gender discriminatory attitudes and practices. Although many of the co-researchers have experienced gender-related discrimination, they still regard the HBCU as a positive environment for African-American women due to the supportive interactions with other African-American female peers and faculty members, which are not largely present in other academic environments. These results demonstrate how identity negotiation differs in different organizational contexts as people construct their social identities in manners that help them adjust to their educational settings. Having experiences at both PWIs and HBCUs helps African-American women learn to negotiate multiple organizations which prepares them for their professional goals while providing opportunities for personal growth and identity development.

The treasure of the Black experience at a Historically Black College/University (HBCU) is that it offers a personal and intimate experience rooted in Black heritage that cannot be found at other institutions. On campus, face-to-face instruction and activities focused on addressing issues that plague the Black community are paramount. This provides students with small classroom environments and the personal support from administrators, faculty, and staff. In March 2020, the Black experience was interrupted when a global pandemic forced governors to declare states of emergencies and mandate stay-at-home orders. The stay-at-home orders forced universities to transition into fully remote environments. Doing so heightened an array of emotions compounded by the reality of previously recognized disparities in resources and funding amongst higher education institutions. As a result of this abrupt transformation, the HBCU experience was impacted by positive and negative implications for Black people at the campus, local, state, and national levels. The Black Experience and Navigating Higher Education Through a Virtual World explores the reality of the Black experience from various perspectives involving higher education institutions with a focus on HBCUs. The book provides an overview and analysis of a virtual experience that goes beyond the day-to-day technological implications and exposes innovative ideas and ways of navigating students and faculty through a remote world. It focuses on heightening the awareness of disparities through the Black experience in a virtual environment, provides guidance on transitioning to fully remote environments, examines leadership dynamics in virtual environments, analyzes mental health balance, and examines implications on the digital divide. Covering topics such as online course delivery, self-health, and social justice, this book is essential for graduate students, academicians, diversity officers in the academy, professors, and researchers.

Although much has been written about leaders and leadership, we unfortunately know little about women, particularly minority women, who fill this particular role. This book presents the stories, and the reflections on their paths to leadership in higher education, of seven African American women. Each has been the first woman, first African American, or first African American woman in one or more of the positions of authority that she has held. Each has overcome the double bind of sexism and racism that can inhibit the professional attainment of African American women. Although they followed different paths to leadership, similarities in their experiences, values, and beliefs emerge. They also express a need to give back to those communities that nourished their growth and leadership – of which this book is a manifestation. At a time when significant turnover in college leadership is about to occur – presenting increased opportunities for women and minorities – these leaders hope that the strategies they describe, the insights they impart, the experiences they recount, and, most of all, the passion they have sustained for the betterment of and greater inclusiveness in higher education, will inspire the next generation of women to answer the leadership call.