A symbiotic solution for facilitating faculty transitions in engineering academia

Two challenges to the logical shift in the nation's engineering faculty demographics may actually become merged as a symbiotic pair of solutions. Underrepresented minorities (URMs) in STEM recently accounted for 6.3% of engineering faculty (National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, 2014), despite approaching nearly a third of the nation's population (2010 Census). A central reason for the disproportionate representation is the continued need for effective mentorship and advocacy for these historically marginalized groups into and through the professoriate. Another sensitivity in the requisite shift in engineering faculty composition pertains to the effective transition of senior faculty who are of retirement age yet have the skillsets and desire to continue to be "active". These two perceived "bottlenecks" in the engineering professoriate are simultaneously addressed by strategically matching retired (with emphasis upon "emeriti") faculty as advocates-mentors for appropriately matched URM faculty. Synergistically, a transformative outcome could be more engineering faculty positions opening to an increasingly diversified pool of talent, wherein a generation of retired/retiring faculty advocate for their empowered successors. A pilot program, Increasing Minority Presence within Academia through Continuous Training (IMPACT), was accordingly implemented wherein seven emeriti faculty from a large engineering college were matched with ten URM engineering faculty and one URM postdoctoral associate (i.e., some emeriti faculty had multiple one-on-one assignments). The younger faculty stakeholders were from different engineering colleges, and each had near-term aspirations regarding their progression through academia. Protocols used for recruiting-matching and proactive intervention were key implementation measures. Both sets of participants have generally had positive outcomes from, and sentiments toward, this initiative; yet there have been some "lessons learned" (e.g., establishing a minimal frequency of contact between emeriti and engineering faculty to which both are more rigorously held accountable).