DIVERSE STUDENTS SUCCEED IN AN INCLUSIVE ACADEMIC CULTURE: THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP, POLICIES AND TARGETED INVESTMENT

Towson University (TU), a large comprehensive primarily undergraduate institution in the University System of Maryland, has growing enrollment and a corresponding increase in student diversity. TU is promoting inclusion and diversifying its faculty and staff, encouraged by strong leadership from presidents, provosts, and deans. Gender diversity in the STEM faculty is high except in the computing sciences, where women are a small minority. In the natural and physical sciences, women occupy 35 of 72 tenured/tenure-track faculty positions (49%). Racial diversity in the STEM faculty, though, is very low with less than 4% under-represented minority (URM) faculty members, exposing a challenge at TU with respect to hiring and retention of minority faculty. This is especially critical as the STEM majors are 42% URM. TU’s efforts to diversify the faculty include the Provost’s Diversity & Inclusion Faculty Fellows, membership in the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity, faculty affinity groups, and special attention to faculty search procedures.

The Fisher College of Science and Mathematics (FCSM) values and rewards basic, applied, and interdisciplinary research (e.g., environmental science and biogeochemistry). The FCSM’s values are reflected in annual faculty awards for Excellence in Scholarship, Teaching, Mentoring, University & Professional Service, and Business & Community Outreach. Promotion and tenure expectations, accordingly, allow for a variety of types of faculty accomplishments, while maintaining the requirements of excellence in teaching and a record of peer-reviewed productivity.

TU’s diverse students are successful, with few achievement gaps, thanks to a number of effective student success programs. These include the NSF-funded Towson Opportunities in STEM (NSF-0653011); the STEM Residential Learning Community; the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence program; and the NSF-funded Geoscience Educational Opportunities for Careers (TU GEO-Careers) project (Moore and Hermann, NSF-1540631).

Fostering an inclusive academic culture requires strong messages from academic leadership, examination of faculty and staff hiring practices, transforming the academic culture for inclusion, and investing in and improving student success.