Strategies to Survive and Thrive in Academia: The Collective Voices of Counseling Faculty of Color

Abstract

This qualitative study investigated the survival and coping strategies employed by 17 faculty of color teaching in counseling programs across the United States. Results indicated that for participants, the meaning of survival extends beyond the ability to meet expectations for tenure and promotion and achieve professional longevity. Survival entails engaging in a variety of actions that allow them to withstand and rise above the damaging effects of microaggressions. Framed as conscious strategies, individual actions become collective acts of resistance against racism and other forms of discrimination. Implications for multicultural faculty development are discussed.

Interview Experiences and Diversity Concerns of Counselor Education Faculty From Underrepresented Groups

“…While previous researchers (Frazier, 2011;Holcomb-McCoy & Bradley, 2003;Turner et al, 2008) focused on faculty members' experiences once they were employed, the findings from the current study suggest that challenges also exist during the hiring process. In addition, the coping strategies participants discussed were consistent with the "survive and thrive" strategies noted by employed counselor educators of color (Salazar, 2009). Although all participants mentioned microaggressions related to their intersecting major identity markers, consistent with extant literature (Sue, 2010), none disclosed reporting the incidents to search committee chairs or department chairs.…”

Theories for Race and Gender Differences in Management of Social Identity-Related Stressors: a Systematic Review

“…Anxiety [67], aggression [13,45], depression [52,[68][69][70][71], metabolic disorders [2,72,73], and substance abuse [74][75][76] are the most commonly studied outcomes, but the compiled literature also addresses the impact of stress management strategies on health-related behaviors such as smoking, care-seeking, and eating habits [41,[77][78][79][80][81]. Strategies for managing stress are also linked to broader social outcomes such as generativity [64]; political beliefs [66]; academic performance, educational attainment, and occupation [63,[82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90]; social activism [91]; parenting practices [92]; and prejudice [93][94][95][96][97][98][99], factors which are frequently positioned as downstream causes of health [100; 101]. For clarity, we organize the results into theories focusing solely on causes for racial/ethnic variation, those focusing only on gender variation, and those considering race and gender variation simultaneously.…”

“…Within this paradigm, the methods black persons employ to manage identitybased stress are attributed directly to their uniquely disadvantaged social positions. Being previously and chronically targeted by racial discrimination [70,74,75,86,89,[103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119][120]; being subject to racial humiliation [117]; perception of oneself as having a stigmatized identity [121][122][123][124][125][126][127][128]; and recognition of one's membership in a negatively stereotyped group [16,43,65,129,130] are characterized as experiences specific to occupying a subordinate social status. According to the reviewed literature, these psychosocial risk factors increase physiological and behavioral reactivity [2,28,105,112,113,115,131,132]…”

“…In contrast, culture theorists contend that Africentric coping [105]-reliance on spirituality and social support, for example [33,40,146,161]-stems from devaluing and disengaging [89] dominant narratives to recreate positive black identities consistent with the group's cultural history [146,148]. The centrality of racial/ethnic identity is demonstrated to affect both adaptive [33,86,146,150] and maladaptive [33,75,109] stress management behaviors.…”

Attending to Diversity Representation Among Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) Master’s Programs: A Pilot Study

“…Faculty in programs that consistently graduate their students of color can feel more confident that they are offering a safe and welcoming environment for their racially diverse students. Maintaining culturally centered departments should be a high priority for all CACREP-accredited master's level counseling programs, due to the racism and discrimination that continues to pervade higher education (Niemann and Maruyama 2005;Salazar 2009). …”