Faculty workload inequities have important consequences for faculty diversity and inclusion. On average, women faculty spend more time engaging in service, teaching, and mentoring, while men, on average, spend more time on research, with women of color facing particularly high workload burdens. We explore how faculty members perceive workload in their departments, identifying mechanisms that can help shape their perceptions of greater equity and fairness. White women perceive that their departments have less equitable workloads and are less committed to workload equity than white men. Women of color perceive that their departments are less likely to credit their important work through departmental rewards systems than white men. Workload transparency and clarity, and consistent approaches to assigning classes, advising, and service, can reduce women’s perceptions of inequitable and unfair workloads. Our research suggests that departments can identify and put in place a number of key practices around workload that will improve gendered and racialized perceptions of workload.

This narrative and integrative literature review synthesizes the literature on when, where, and how the faculty hiring process used in most American higher education settings operates with implicit and cognitive bias. The literature review analyzes the “four phases” of the faculty hiring process, drawing on theories from behavioral economics and social psychology. The results show that although much research establishes the presence of bias in hiring, relatively few studies examine interventions or “nudges” that might be used to mitigate bias and encourage the recruitment and hiring of faculty identified as women and/or faculty identified as being from an underrepresented minority group. This article subsequently makes recommendations for historical, quasi-experimental, and randomized studies to test hiring interventions with larger databases and more controlled conditions than have previously been used, with the goal of establishing evidence-based practices that contribute to a more inclusive hiring process and a more diverse faculty.

Calls to diversify the professoriate have been ongoing for decades. However, despite increasing numbers of scholars from underrepresented racial minority groups earning doctorates, actual progress in transitioning to faculty has been slow, particularly across STEM disciplines. In recent years, new efforts have emerged to recruit faculty members from underrepresented racial minority groups (i.e., African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and/or Native American/Native Hawaiian/Indigenous) through highly competitive postdoctoral programs that allow fellows the opportunity to transition (or “convert”) into tenure-track roles. These programs hybridize some conventional aspects of the faculty search process (e.g., structured interview processes that facilitate unit buy-in) along with novel evidence-based practices and structural supports (e.g., proactive recruitment, cohort communities, search waivers, professional development, enhanced mentorship, financial incentives). In this policy and practice review, we describe and synthesize key attributes of existing conversion programs at institutional, consortium, and system levels. We discuss commonalities and unique features across models (N = 38) and draw specific insights from postdoctoral conversion models developed within and across institutions in the University System of Maryland (USM). In particular, experience garnered from a 10-year-old postdoc conversion program at UMBC will be highlighted, as well as the development of an additional institutional model aimed at the life sciences, and a state-system model of faculty diversification with support from a NSF Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) grant.

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Aim/Purpose: This study examines how higher education and student affairs doctoral students and their partners navigate the graduate school experience through the lens of linked lives. Background: Enhancing doctoral students’ ability to integrate their academic and personal lives can contribute to positive student outcomes such as retention and satisfaction. Yet, many features of graduate education may undermine students’ ability to maintain their romantic relationships. Methodology: This study draws from joint and individual interviewers with six couples (12 individuals), wherein one partner was a doctoral student in higher education or student affairs. Contribution: Many studies examine work-life integration for faculty members, but much less research seeks to understand how academia affects the experiences of graduate students and their partners. This study contributes to the literature on graduate student work-life integration by putting couples at the center of analysis, using theories of linked lives, and considers implications for doctoral students and graduate training programs in higher education and student affairs. Findings: Our findings revealed three main ways that doctoral students and their partners navigated graduate education: shared decision-making; negotiating, turn-taking, and trading off; and strategically integrating or dividing academic and personal lives. Recommendations for Practitioners: Graduate programs and institutions can enhance work-life integration and the experiences of doctoral students and their partners by incorporating discussion of dual-career concerns into the recruitment/admissions process and considering work-life concerns throughout the doctoral experience. Recommendation for Researchers: Applying the theoretical framework of linked lives brings visibility to a layer of the graduate student experience previously made invisible: the role of student’s partners. Impact on Society: By recognizing the work-life experiences of higher education and student affairs doctoral students and their partners, this study challenges graduate training programs to consider how to change or enhance the resources and structures offered to graduate students in ways that contribute to satisfaction and retention. Future Research: Longitudinal examination of doctoral students and their partners over time and comparison of experiences of couples in different fields/disciplines.