Voices of Urban and Rural Community College Minority Faculty: Satisfaction and Opinions

Creating and Implementing a Faculty Interest Group for Historically Underrepresented Faculty

“…In addition, the literature tends to aggregate the experiences of these different ethnoracial groups, focus on female faculty of color, or leave out Asian/Pacific Islander American and Middle Eastern/North African American faculty altogether (Bower, 2002;CCCC, 2013;Flowers, 2005;Isaac & Boyer, 2007;Perna, 2003). As a result, it can be challenging to understand the unique experiences and needs of members of each group.…”

“…URF tend to have more obstacles to their general satisfaction and retention than their majority counterparts (White, heterosexual, and nondisabled males) (Flowers, 2005;Isaac & Boyer, 2007). This article attempts to advance knowledge in this area as well as help community college faculty and higher education administrators better support URFs.…”

“…The remainder of this article provides a brief overview of the literature about disabled faculty, faculty of color, female faculty, and LGBT faculty; reviews the purpose of faculty interest groups; describes the creation and implementation of a faculty interest group for URF at a large, urban community college; and ends with a discussion of how community college faculty and administrators can implement a faculty interest group for URF. Isaac and Boyer (2007) suggest that "literature relative to . .…”

“…As the numbers of women, students of color, and students with disabilities continue to increase at community colleges, increasing the number of historically underrepresented faculty (URF) becomes a critical responsibility for these colleges (Rifkin, 2000) in order to most effectively address the needs for those populations. URF are often role models, advisors, and advocates for underrepresented students, and they expose majority students to new ideas and perspectives (California Community College Collaborative [CCCC], 2013;Isaac & Boyer, 2007). Yet in the fall of 2009, only 22.5% of community college faculty members were of color .…”

Recruiting, Retaining, and Benefiting From a Diverse Community College Faculty: A Case Study of One College’s Successes

“…Piercy et al (2005), in their description of their model recruitment and retention project, identify relation building as critical to both recruitment and retention. Isaac and Boyer (2007) reviewed satisfaction of urban and rural community college faculty of color data from the 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty. They looked at various working condition factors (e.g., pay and workload) and concluded that these factors were insufficient to explain retention of faculty.…”