Tool reveals what professors think about diversity

"I think we were able to come up with a concise, sound tool that institutions can use to measure faculty perceptions of diversity," says Lisa Wolf-Wendel, professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Kansas. "Certainly our goal would be to get other institutions to try the instrument and find it useful." Their article on the tool's development and testing appears in the journal Research & Practice in Assessment.In the testing of ACES, the researchers focused on gender, race, ethnicity, and national origin as their terms of diversity. They acknowledge sexual orientation, religious diversity, disability, and other categories could be topics of concern in diversity and that they could be added to future versions of the instrument.

The survey containing 100 items in the ACES categories was sent to all tenure-track, full-time faculty members at a large Midwestern research university. Respondents were 38 percent full professors, 35 percent associate professors, and 26 percent assistant professors. Women represented 47 percent of respondents, international faculty 14 percent, and 17 percent were racial/ethnic minorities.Participants were asked to rate on a scale of 1-5 whether they strongly disagreed to strongly agreed with statements about diversity as it related to their campus, employment, teaching, research, and other areas.

The responses yielded several significant findings, the researchers wrote. Those with positive attitudes toward diversity goals tended to be female, not tenured, and at their institution for less than 15 years. Those who believed their teaching or research reflected issues of diversity were more likely to be female, new to their institution and working in the humanities.Respondents who believed their institution promoted diversity were more likely to be males, white, tenured faculty, and staff and those who had been in higher education longer overall. Those who says they interact with diverse populations as part of their work were most likely to be in the sciences and least likely to be in a professional school.