Latina Faculty Research Articles

Sí Se Puede: Supporting Latina Faculty Workers to Succeed in Academia

Sí Se Puede: Supporting Latina Faculty Workers to Succeed in Academia

Latina Faculty at a Catholic Hispanic-Serving Institution: Critical Counter-Stories About Racialized & Gendered Experiences and Servingness

ABSTRACT Studies have shown that Latina faculty have negative racialized and gendered experiences while teaching at their institutions. An emerging body of research shows that these experiences also occur at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of Latina faculty at one small, private, four-year Catholic HSI (C-HSI) that was trying to make sense of its C-HSI identity. Using a counter-storytelling approach and one-on-one interviews, we came to understand the racialized and gendered experiences of four Latina faculty through the themes of preservation, the act of being pushed out of the institution, and elusive administrative support. With a national call to recruit more faculty of Color to work in HSIs we argue for a focused effort on supporting currently employed faculty of Color, and specifically Latina faculty, as an aspect of servingness. Arguably, HSIs should serve (and humanize) Latine faculty too, not just students. Implications are offered for research and practice.

“It’s Me, Do You Have a Second?”: How Testimonios and Personal Narratives of Mentorship and Friendship Help a Tenure-Track Latina Navigate the Academy

ABSTRACT In this paper, we explore personal testimonios from a Latina’s first year in a tenure-track position. We share testimonios and personal narratives based on mentorship and a friendship that was cultivated between a tenured white female professor who helped the Latina professor learn to navigate the landscape of a working at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HIS). Through dialogue and reflections of specific moments during that first year, our story reveals the following themes: (1) validating emotions and overcoming imposter syndrome, (2) strategizing and balancing scholarly opportunities, (3) how assessment and evaluation impact novice tenuretrack faculty members and (4) the role that a White mentor takes in helping a Latina faculty member when there are no other tenured Latinas in her department.

Latina faculty developing a bilingual family studies class at a newly designated Hispanic serving institution: “these are safe spaces”

ABSTRACT Given the growth of Latinx populations and the increasing significance of creating more inclusive higher education environments, it is vital to explore the importance of how Latinx bilingual faculty develop and teach transcultural content. The present research was a qualitative case study based on interviews with three Latina faculty at a newly designated Hispanic Service Institute University in the Northeast of the U.S. Via thematic analysis, findings revealed a range of processes related to creating safe spaces for both students and faculty, along with developing a class centered on the co-creation of knowledge. In particular, three Latina faculty described the challenges and opportunities of developing a bilingual and transcultural curriculum. This description may help other minoritized faculty members to propose new classes designed and delivered in a bilingual way to enhance the students’ educational experiences in higher education. Implications for minoritized faculty developing similar curricula in higher education are addressed.

Finding an academic home, but still searching for our place: A call for mentoring from the voices of Latina junior faculty

Universities across the country are faced with the challenges of meeting the demands of an increasing diverse student population. In order to address this need, many efforts have been made focusing on recruitment strategies for a more diverse faculty. While these recruiting efforts are essential, little attention has been paid to retention. By underscoring similar experiences, this article provides qualitative insight on issues around the negotiation of identities as Latinas in classrooms, institutions, and research programs. It argues for urgency from institutions of higher education in urban, diverse environments to address the Latina experience, social locations, and standpoints. The purpose of this article is to use narratives from current junior Latina faculty to highlight the need for and the development of effective mentoring programs that address the unique needs of diverse faculty. In sharing the author’s varying experiences and challenges from graduate school to careers in academia, we hope to influence policies and decisions that consider the unique cultural experiences of Latina graduate students, early career scientists, and junior faculty. Our fundamental goal is to advocate for structured mentoring programs as a critical component to ensuring retention and increasing academic success within a diverse professoriate.

“We Came Together Out of Necessity”: A Latina Diaspora Group Engaging in Plática to Thrive with Dignity in Academia

In this article, five Latina faculty members and one Latina doctoral student engaged in Chicana feminist plática methodology to examine how creating and participating in a Latina diaspora group supports our personal and professional well-being. As Latina researchers/educators, situated in a predominantly White institution (PWI) in the Midwest, we collected narrative and discussion data centered around how our collaborative group provided a space to navigate academia and higher education. We analyzed our narratives and our analysis revealed three themes: (a) resisting the silos of academia through liminal spaces, (b) blurring our borders of the professional and personal through pláticas, and (c) disrupting hierarchies through la facultad. This article informs scholarly conversations about Latina/Chicana ways of knowing, and what it means to work in solidarity as women faculty of color within PWIs.

Creando Comunidad: Experiences of Latina Faculty and Staff Mentors at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

Guided by Chicana Feminist Epistemology, the authors of this study discuss the experiences of 16 Latina faculty and staff who served as mentors in a Latina undergraduate mentoring program at a research-extensive public university designated as a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI). This article focuses on findings from interviews as mentors made sense of their own educational trajectories and discussed how the mentoring program affected them. Findings indicate that although mentors initially joined the program to guide undergraduate Latinas, they also benefitted from a faculty and staff peer network and felt a greater sense of belonging in an institution where they sometimes felt isolated. The findings demonstrate the importance of such mentoring programs at HSIs and can inform how mentoring programs for Latinx students can be designed in ways that benefit multiple stakeholders.

Improvising a space for us: A testimonio from a Latina Diaspora Group

In 2018 we created our own Latina Diaspora Group to share our stories and provide support for one another to overcome barriers we face within our institution and the academy. Leveraging jazz as metaphor, we present an testimonio to provide curricular possibilities for Latina faculty to co-create, imagine, and push back on structural limitations in higher education. As part of our testimonio, we also include an original music track that represents our mode of communicating and interacting. We end with a call for other communities of marginalized faculty to join us in creating new knowledge formations and curriculum of resistance that can potentially transform academic spaces.

A Systematic Review of Select Social Science and Humanities Literature: The Presence and Positioning of Latina Professors

To understand the presence and positioning of Latina faculty in humanities and social science scholarship, the authors analyzed articles published between 2000 and 2016 and developed three findings. First, few papers centered Latina professors. Second, when Latina faculty were featured in scholarship, it was often in the context of research concerning other minoritized and underrepresented faculty, more generally. Third, Latina faculty were frequently elevated as intellectuals when Latina-identifying scholars conducted the work.

Transforming the Culture of Academia One Classroom at a Time: Testimonio of a Latina Junior Faculty Member Engaging in Latina Critical Pedagogical Activism

Inspired by the work of Chicana feminist scholars, the author narrates her process of academic awakening and survival by illustrating how testimonio can be utilized as a pedagogical tool within the classroom. She introduces the concept of Latina Critical Pedagocial Activism (LCPA) and its’ four tenets—centralización, epistemological engagement, educonfianza, and lengua resistencia—as a tool to be utilized by Latina faculty. LCPA serves a pedagogical framework faculty could utilize to validate their experiences in the classroom, while simultaneously communicating to Latinx students that their culture matters; that they belong and deserve to be in academia. Together, students and faculty disrupt hegemonic schooling practices by centering non-white ways of knowing, learning, and teaching.

Narrative Ethnographies of Diverse Faculty in Higher Education: “Moral” Multiculturalism among Competing Worldviews

Since the Civil Right Movement in the United States, African Americans and other diverse students have forged through “integrated” educational systems to terminal graduate degrees. Some studies suggest racial integration in U. S. schools made White participants less prejudiced toward others, although the data showed that after schooling, many Whites again lived (and still do) in segregated neighborhoods with separation in places of employment, churches, and social groups (Wells, Holme, Revilla, & Atanda, 2004). One diverse participant in this study asked whether, after decades of integration, there has been any real progress, citing excellent educational experiences with all Black teachers within the all Black schools where he grew up. Is it truly progress for diverse students when they are bussed across town to be treated as minorities in mostly White schools? More diverse students do graduate from college; however, the diversity rate of professors is still abysmal. This study reports the contextual experiences of three African American (one an administrator) and one Latina faculty member with decades of experience in the public educational system and as they engaged in the culture of higher education struggling with a moral multiculturalism—whether worldviews (therefore free speech) could be morally determined and whether they as diverse faculty truly belong and are truly respected.

Weaving Authenticity and Legitimacy: Latina Faculty Peer Mentoring

As an alternative to typical top‐down mentoring models, the authors advance a conception of peer mentoring that is based on research about collectivist strategies that Latina faculty employ to navigate the academy. The authors advance recommendations for institutional agents to support mentoring for faculty who are members of historically underrepresented groups.

Mentoring as Transformative Practice: Supporting Student and Faculty Diversity

Mentoring as Transformative Practice: Supporting Student and Faculty Diversity

Latina Faculty Transcending Barriers: Peer Mentoring in a Hispanic-serving Institution

In this article, the authors conducted a research metasynthesis of publications by a group of Latina tenure-track faculty participating in a peer mentoring group, the Research for the Educational Advancement of Latin@s (REAL) collaborative, housed in one Hispanic Serving Institution. Due to the small representation of Latinas in the academy, the significance of non-hierarchical peer-mentoring structures is observed as empowering Latina faculty to develop personal and/or professional transformation. We asked, “What peer mentoring strategies can Latina faculty employ to navigate academia?” These faculty members’ experiences in building a scholarly community pose a counter-narrative to the historical isolation of underrepresented faculty in academia and suggest possibilities for women faculty of color to construct a personal and professional community in the academy.

The Recruitment and Support of Latino Faculty for Tenure and Promotion

Retaining and supporting Latino faculty is a challenge for many colleges and universities in the United States. This article focuses on the unique experiences faced by Latino junior faculty, when power differentials between senior faculty are most prominent in their career, and examines the cultural norms of personalismo, familismo, and collectivism and their professional experiences. Recommendations are made regarding how organizational policies can promote a more inclusionary environment for Latino and Latina faculty members.

Restructuring the Master's Tools: Black Female and Latina Faculty Navigating and Contributing in Classrooms Through Oppositional Positions

Employing critical race feminism, this article explores how black and Latina women faculty alter the teaching and learning environment at a predominantly white, research institution (PWI). The limited research on faculty of color at PWIs focuses on barriers to career success, yet places less emphasis on how these faculty negotiate barriers and facilitate structural change. Furthermore, higher education literature links faculty of color to a climate of inclusion, yet there is minimal empirical literature on how the presence of diverse faculty affects the well-being of campus communities. This study, then, aims to examine how black female and Latina faculty navigate and contribute to the classroom environment at a premier public institution. Though not mutually exclusive, the key findings from this qualitative study are that the participants navigate and contribute in two key ways: enacting legitimacy and employing equity-based pedagogy. Both strategies reflect oppositional positions, an awareness of being part of a socially marginalized group, combined with resistance against individual and collective subordination.

DIVERSE PATHWAYS TO THE PHD: A STUDY OF WOMEN FACULTY IN THE SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING AT A HISPANIC-SERVING INSTITUTION

The National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE grants for Institutional Transformation have been awarded to institutions to study, and to implement programs to improve, the number of women who are recruited, retained, and promoted as faculty in the sciences and engineering at American universities. At one ADVANCE institution, 57 women faculty in the social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering were interviewed to determine their pathways to the doctoral degree. Through the use of qualitative analyses, this study identifi ed major themes that emerged from the interviews of Anglo, international, and Latina faculty. The fi ndings of the study should contribute to the discourse on underrepresentation of women faculty in the sciences and engineering in general, and Latina faculty in particular.

Surviving the Doctorate and Thriving as Faculty: Latina Junior Faculty Reflecting on Their Doctoral Studies Experiences

This study examines the experiences of Latina faculty during their doctoral education. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with tenure-track Latina faculty (who primarily self-identified as Chicanas, Latinas, and Mexican Americans) across the west and southwest United States. Resiliency theory was used to help structure and understand the findings. Findings show the nature and experiences of Latinas' resiliency during their doctoral programs in the areas of social competence, problem-solving, autonomy, and sense of purpose. The study concludes with a discussion on how academic leaders and institutional change agents can begin to address the education roadblocks experienced by academic Latinas.

Expanding conceptualizations of culturally competent care.

The aim of the study was to gain an understanding of cultural competence from the perspectives of non-mainstream nurse educators, specifically those of Latin heritage. Although the theoretical concepts of 'cultural diversity' and 'culturally competent care' have been supported and promoted by the largest professional nursing organizations, the practical application of these concepts has often created difficulties for nurse researchers, educators, and clinicians. The lack of progress in teaching and evaluating cultural competence suggested the need to 'center the margins' and explore cultural competence from the margins of one particular non-mainstream nursing group, Latina nurse educators. A grounded theory research design was employed. A group of 10 doctoral, prepared, self-identified, Latina nurse educators participated in face- to-face audiotaped interviews. Data collection, analysis, and theoretical sampling decisions occurred concurrently, strengthening theory generation. Institutional review board approval was received for all steps of the study. The major limitation of the study was the omission of student voices. The analysis suggests that the Latina participants shared the common purpose of teaching students how to think about difference. The teaching practices of this group of Latina educators was based on a belief that 'difference' is not solely about specific cultural groups. For example, content about 'Hmongs' or 'Latinos'. Rather, Latina faculty focused on teaching students how to directly connect with anyone perceived as different from oneself. Latina faculty did not distinguish between competent care and culturally competent care; for them, competence necessarily includes cultural competence. They conceptualize the provision of competent care to all persons who are perceived as different, rather than focusing only on those who are perceived as 'culturally' different. These conceptualizations have the potential to shed new light on how nurses and nurse educators think about, develop, and integrate cultural competence into nursing education, practice, and research.

Narratives from Latina Professors in Higher Education

This article shares the lives of three Latina faculty members teaching in state colleges of education. Interviews revealed that the personal and professional experiences they encountered on a daily basis reflected tokenism in the academy, varying levels of support, and perceived burdens and expectations. All three women saw knowledge as contextual and often relied on feelings and intuition to describe and assess their lives in the academy. Recommendations for change within the academy are offered.