Considerations for the effective mentoring of STEM women of color faculty at a striving private technical university

Underrepresentation of women of color, WoC (African American, Latina American, and Native American) faculty, in STEM disciplines at predominately major-group institutions in the U.S., is of great concern. Of faculty positions, at the end of the first decade of this century, American-Indian women held 0.6 percent, Latinas held 4.0 percent, Asian-American women held 6.7 percent, and African-American women held 7.0 percent while European-American women held 78.2 percent [12]. Delgado and Stefanek [6], Thomas and Hollenshead [14], and Cooper and Stephens [3] point out WoC faculty´s unique challenges in higher education. Compared to their majority-group female colleagues, WoC face additional barriers based on the intersections of race/ethnicity and gender. They live with multiple marginality [2,5,16,15]. Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) STEM WoC faculty´s representation is dismal even as some continue to be denied tenure. This situation provides impetus for this National Science Foundation-funded ADVANCE project whose underlying objective is to examine barriers to STEM WoC faculty´s career success. The lack of effective mentoring contributes to the STEM WoC faculty´s low retention and advancement rate. Therefore, there is a need for RIT to establish a mentoring program that takes STEM WoC faculty´s unique circumstance into consideration.