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Faculty learning and agency for racial equity

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Faculty learning and agency for racial equity

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Content Running head: FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 1

Faculty Learning and Agency for Racial Equity
By
Román Liera

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
In Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN URBAN EDUCATION POLICY

August 2018
Dissertation Chair: Dr. Estela Bensimon
Committee Members: Dr. Alicia Dowd, Dr. Julie Posselt, Dr. Elaine Kaplan

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 2

Acknowledgments
“I wish I knew some other way to render the mental life of the immigrant child of reasoning
age…What the child thinks and feels is a reflection of the hopes, desires, and purposes of the
parents who brought him overseas, no matter how precocious and independent the child may be.
–Mary Antin, The Promised Land, pp. 198.
The journey to my Ph.D. started with my parents’ hopes and dreams for their children to
have the educational opportunities that they did not have in Tzentzenguaro, Michoacán. The
stories you both shared with me when I was growing up nurtured my imagination and permitted
me to get lost in my thoughts about how I made sense of the world. To mi apá, Ramón Liera, I
am grateful that you taught me to be free-spirited and to stay optimistic even when it’s difficult
to see the light. To mi amá, Rosalinda Cortez, there are no words to describe how lucky I am to
have been raised by a strong, independent, and resilient mujer. Your love helped me stay humble
and keep my struggles in perspective that reading, thinking, and writing is a privilege denied to
too many people in our community. I also want to thank my brother, Ramón Liera, and sister,
Jessica Liera. Thank you for being the amazing siblings a little brother could have ever asked.
This Ph.D. is our accomplishment.
This dissertation would not have been possible without the faculty who took time from
their busy schedules to participate in my dissertation. I am particularly grateful to those
professors who participated multiple times and who allowed me to observe them in spaces that
are often closed off to outsiders. I am forever thankful for your time, knowledge, and support.
I am also grateful to have an amazing and talented dissertation committee. I would not
have been able to finish my dissertation without the support and guidance of Dr. Estela
Bensimon. Thank you for challenging me to write in a way that will bring the reader into the
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 3

world of my participants. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from one of the most
influential qualitative researchers in racial equity. I am also indebted to Dr. Alicia Dowd who has
not only mentored me but believed in my potential as a scholar. I appreciate the freedom you
gave me to intellectually express myself while guiding me to bring together different ideas and
concepts. Thank you for the feedback at every step to design and write a theoretically rich, yet
practically relevant dissertation. Dr. Julie Posselt thank you for enriching my doctoral education
in so many ways. I appreciate the many times you intellectually challenged me to take abstract
ideas into concrete research and for always validating my scholarship. I also want to thank Dr.
Elaine Kaplan whose expertise on race, equity, and emotions brought a level of sociological
criticalness that played a significant role in how I thought about racial equity.
As anyone who has been through a similar academic journey, completing a dissertation is
not an individual accomplishment. In my time at USC I have made many amazing friends who
intellectually challenged and emotionally supported me. I am grateful to Diane Nevárez who
welcomed me to the program by introducing me to the unofficial but instrumental Latinx
community in the Urban Education Policy Ph.D. program. When things got hard, I always read
the message you left me on an index card during my first and most challenging year, “Keep
making us proud! (and don’t forget to sleep, eat, etc.)” I also want to thank my family at the
Center for Urban Education: Adrian Trinidad, Cheryl Ching, Cynthia Villarreal, Daniel Galvan,
Jason Robinson, Jordan Greer, Paloma Saenz, and Maxine Roberts. Thank you for creating a
welcoming and supportive space at USC. Cynthia, thanks for being my research partner. I truly
have learned a lot from you. I also want to thank Dr. Lindsey Malcom-Piquex for being an
amazing role model. I value all the advice you have given me about being a “woke” racially
minoritized scholar in academia.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 4

In the words of Canadian rap artist, Drake, “without [Eric Felix] and [Edwin Hernandez],
there would be no me. Imagine if I never met the broskies.” It has been a privilege to have met
two other Latino men who became brothers throughout the last five years. I appreciate your
brothership. I am excited to see what our professional futures hold.
Last but not least, this journey would not have been possible without the love, support,
and sacrifices this Ph.D. journey asked of you, Katrina Arce. You have been my rock and my
source of joy throughout the different stages of the Ph.D. program. Thank you for taking me on
vacations to Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, for going to the movies to watch another superhero movie,
and for just being you. There are no words to describe how much you mean to me and how much
your love played a role in finishing my dissertation. I owe you the world and much more.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 5

Abstract
Equity researchers focus on how professors learn about the existence of racial inequities
on their campus and how their practices perpetuate such injustices. From an agentic perspective,
I argue that the interaction between professors’ social location and structure informs their
strategies to implement racial equity. In three empirical studies, I use narrative inquiry to provide
a unique look at how professors advance racial equity in various areas of faculty life. The first
study draws upon interview data of faculty who were part of a larger group called on to broker
structural changes to promote racial equity on their campuses. The findings illustrate that
working across the “silos” of institutional boundaries to promote equity requires active
negotiation of social differences across faculty roles (e.g., research, teaching, service). The
second and third studies investigate the experiences of faculty who were part of their university’s
effort to implement racial equity in faculty hiring. In study two, the findings draw on document,
observation, and interview data to reveal how interrogating the campus culture provides faculty
opportunities to use their critical knowledge and experiences with racism to advance racial
equity in faculty hiring. In the third study, I analyze document, observation, and interview data to
demonstrate how the intersecting social identities (e.g., race) and professional identities (e.g.,
rank) of professors are interrelated with systems of power that create unique challenges for
individual faculty to advance racial equity. I conclude the dissertation with implications for
practice, policy, and research on faculty agency for racial equity.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 6

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 2
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 5
Figures………………………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Tables…………………………………………………………………………………………... 10
Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................. 11
Research Focus and Questions ...................................................................................................... 14
Literature Review.......................................................................................................................... 17
Socialization as Researchers ..................................................................................................... 18
Faculty Agency ......................................................................................................................... 19
Inquiry-Based Interventions as Opportunities to Advance Racial Equity .................................... 23
Methodology and Methods of Dissertation Research ................................................................... 26
The Equity Scorecard as the Inquiry-Based Intervention in Chapter Two ............................... 29
Inquiry and Racial Equity in Faculty Hiring for Chapters Three and Four .............................. 30
Overview of Dissertation .............................................................................................................. 31
Chapter 2: Faculty Learning at Boundaries to Broker Racial Equity .................................. 34
Literature Review: Faculty Agency .............................................................................................. 40
Conceptual Framework: Boundary Crossing for Racial Equity ................................................... 42
Learning at the Boundaries ........................................................................................................... 44
Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 46
Methods ..................................................................................................................................... 47
Sample ................................................................................................................................... 47
Analytical Process ......................................................................................................................... 49
Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 49
Positionality ........................................................................................................................... 52
Limitations ................................................................................................................................ 52
Findings......................................................................................................................................... 53
Faculty Agency for Racial Equity within the Boundaries of the Equity Scorecard .................. 53
Advancing Racial Equity across University Silos..................................................................... 57
Transforming Boundaries outside the Equity Scorecard ........................................................... 61
Discussion ..................................................................................................................................... 63
Concluding Remarks ..................................................................................................................... 66
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 7

Chapter 3: Faculty Agency to Advance Racial Equity in Faculty Hiring ............................. 68
Literature Review: Faculty Agency to Advance Racial Equity .................................................... 70
Inquiry-Based Interventions to Address Racial Equity ................................................................ 72
Conceptual Framework: Cultural Historical Activity Theory ...................................................... 74
Inner Contradictions as Opportunities for Learning ................................................................. 77
Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 78
Study Site: Valley Oaks University’s Partnership with the Center for Urban Education ......... 79
Sampling.................................................................................................................................... 83
Positionality ............................................................................................................................... 84
Data Collection .......................................................................................................................... 85
Analytical Process ..................................................................................................................... 86
Limitations ................................................................................................................................ 91
Findings......................................................................................................................................... 92
The Opening Act: Disrupting the Unspoken ............................................................................. 93
The Intermission: Moving from “Why” Racial Equity to “How” to Embed Racial Equity ..... 99
First Act: Implicit Bias ........................................................................................................ 102
Second Act: Faculty Search Guidelines .............................................................................. 104
Final Act: Equity-Minded Interview Questions .................................................................. 105
Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 108
Implications................................................................................................................................. 111
Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................................... 112
Chapter 4: Professors as Equity Advocates on Faculty Search Committees ...................... 114
Literature Review: Faculty Agency and Social Location to Advance Racial Equity ................. 117
Faculty Agency from a Critical Perspective ........................................................................... 118
Faculty Agency for Racial Equity as a Dialectic Interaction .................................................. 120
Conceptual Framework ............................................................................................................... 122
Faculty Search Committees as Activity Systems .................................................................... 122
Inner contradictions ............................................................................................................. 124
The Convergence of Systems of Power and Faculty Agency for Racial Equity..................... 125
Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 126
Study Setting: Valley Oaks University’s Racial Equity Efforts ............................................. 127
Positionality ............................................................................................................................. 129
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 8

Sampling.................................................................................................................................. 130
Equity advocate role ............................................................................................................ 130
Data Collection ........................................................................................................................ 131
Observations ........................................................................................................................ 131
Interviews. ........................................................................................................................... 132
Documents ........................................................................................................................... 133
Analytical Process for Observation Data ................................................................................ 133
Analytical Process for Interview Data .................................................................................... 134
Limitations .............................................................................................................................. 139
Findings....................................................................................................................................... 139
Negotiating Equity Advocate Roles ........................................................................................ 140
Integrated Role as Equity Advocates ................................................................................... 140
Compartmentalized Role as Equity Advocate ..................................................................... 143
The Invisible Language of Bro Code in Faculty Hiring.......................................................... 145
Birds of a Feather Flock Together: Discursive Moves and White Homophily ....................... 151
Strategies to Overcome Power Dynamics ............................................................................... 156
Legitimate Role as an Equity Advocate .............................................................................. 156
Equity Advocate Pick and Roll ........................................................................................... 157
Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 159
Implications for Practice ............................................................................................................. 164
Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................................... 165
Chapter 5: Summary and Conclusions ................................................................................... 166
Summary ................................................................................................................................. 167
Synthesis.................................................................................................................................. 171
Theoretical contributions......................................................................................................... 174
Implications................................................................................................................................. 175
Implications for Faculty Training ........................................................................................... 176
Implications for Policy ............................................................................................................ 178
Implications for Future Research ............................................................................................ 179
References .................................................................................................................................. 182
Appendices ................................................................................................................................. 202
Appendix A: Chapter Two Interview Protocol for Faculty Participants .................................... 202
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 9

Appendix B: Chapter Two Interview Protocol for Evidence Team Leaders .............................. 210
Appendix C: Plot Example for Chapter Two .............................................................................. 214
Appendix D: Chapter Three Recruitment Email ........................................................................ 215
Appendix E: Chapter Three Information Sheet .......................................................................... 216
Appendix F: Information about Observation Data for Chapter Three ........................................ 218
Appendix G: Observation Protocol for Chapter Three ............................................................... 219
Appendix H: Interview Protocol for Chapter Three ................................................................... 221
Appendix I: Connecting Theory to Data Collection for Chapter Three ..................................... 224
Appendix J: Plot Example for Chapter Three ............................................................................. 226
Appendix K: Recruitment Email for Chapter Four..................................................................... 227
Appendix L: Chapter Four Information Sheet ............................................................................ 228
Appendix M: Connecting Theory to Data for Chapter Four ....................................................... 230
Appendix N: Information on Observations for Chapter Four ..................................................... 231
Appendix O: Observation Protocol for Chapter Four ................................................................. 233
Appendix P: Interview Protocol for Chapter Four ...................................................................... 235
Appendix Q: Examples of Codes for Observation Data for Chapter Four ................................. 237
Appendix R: Plot Example for Chapter Four ............................................................................. 238

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 10

Figures
Figure 3.1. Inquiry-Based Intervention as an Activity System………………………………....76
Figure 4.1. Faculty Agency for Racial Equity as Influenced by Social Location...…………...120
Figure 4.2. Search Committee as an Activity System………………………………………....123
Figure 4.3. Interacting Activity Systems………………………………………………………125
Tables
Table 2.1. Contributions of Boundary Crossing and Boundary Objects to Faculty Agency….38
Table 2.2. Faculty Background Characteristics………………………………………………..48
Table 2.3. Boundary Crossing Coding Scheme………………………………………………..50
Table 2.4. Sample Matrix used for Analysis…………………………………………………...51
Table 3.1. Faculty Hiring Outcomes from 2013-2014 to 2016-2017…………………………..79
Table 3.2. Evidence Team Meetings…………………………………………………………...81
Table 3.3. Faculty Evidence Team Members…………………………………………………..83
Table 3.4. Examples of Codes for Plot Elements……………………………………………....88
Table 3.5. Example of Script Analysis………………………………………………………....90
Table 4.1. Faculty Hiring Outcomes from 2013-2014 to 2016-2017………………………….128
Table 4.2. Characteristics of Equity Advocates………………………………………………..128
Table 4.3. Examples of Codes for Plot Elements………………………………………………137

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 11

Chapter 1: Introduction
U.S. higher education continues to fall short in serving the public good because of the
enduring problems with racial equity in student outcomes across racial lines. For this dissertation
study, racial equity refers to a situation where education practices and policies produce outcomes
among racial and ethnic groups and enables racially minoritized
1
groups to be in higher
education environments free of discrimination and bias. Achieving the goal of racial equity
requires professors to be race-conscious to emphasize racial differences and attend to the needs
of racially minoritized groups (Dowd & Bensimon, 2015); to be critical about the relationship
between race and power (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012); to be racially literate to name and change
structures that preserve white advantage; and to empower racially minoritized groups (Garces &
Gordon da Cruz, 2017).
Although Black and Latinx students have made strides in their pre-collegial academic
preparation, racial inequity in higher education access and outcomes continue to persist (Posselt,
Jaqutte, Bielby, & Bastedo, 2012). For example, from 1990 to 2013 the high school completion
rates for Black, Latinx, and white 18 to 24-year-olds increased from 83% to 92%; 59% to 85%;
90% to 94%, respectively (Musu-Gillette et al., 2016). However, even with those increases, in
2013, the undergraduate enrollment rates for Black and Latinx students aged 18 to 24 was 34%,
in comparison to the 42% enrollment rates of their white peers (Musu-Gillette et al., 2016).
Further, the majority of white first-year students attend the 468 most selective, four-year colleges
while their Black and Latinx peers primarily attend under-resourced two- and four-year colleges

1
In this dissertation I use racially minoritized to refer to Latinx, Black, Native American, Asian-American, and
Pacific Islander groups. The term minoritized is used instead of “minority” throughout this paper to signify that
persons are not born into a minority status, but are made subordinate and rendered into minority positions by US
social institutions (See Harper, 2012). By taking this approach, my intention is not to essentialize the diverse
experiences, languages, and cultures of Black, Latinx, Native American, and Southeast Asians.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 12

(Carnevale & Strohl, 2013). What is troubling from this racialized pattern is that more than 30%
of Black and Latinx students with a high school grade point average higher than 3.5 on a 4.0
scale attend community colleges compared to 22% of their white peers (Carnevale & Strohl,
2013). In 2013, approximately 29% of whites over 18 years of age held a bachelor’s degree or
higher, while far fewer of their Black (20%) and Latinx (13%) peers had earned a baccalaureate
degree (Museus, Ledesma, & Parker, 2015).
The existence of racial inequities in stratified institutions, such as higher education, are
consequences of institutional racism. Institutional racism refers to the “standard operating
procedures (intentional and unintentional) that hurt members of one or more races in relation to
members of the dominant race” (Scheurich & Young, 2002, p. 224). Bensimon (2007) argued
that professors who view racial inequities as symptoms of individual effort tend to refrain from
externalizing problems by attributing them to students. For example, faculty who understand
student success as an outcome of individual effort assume that motivated students will take
advantage of support systems on campus. Professors with this perspective, often do not
acknowledge the role of racism in postsecondary education; instead, they might interpret racial
inequities as deterministic deficiencies of racially minoritized communities (Bensimon &
Malcom, 2012).
At the policy level, outcomes- and performance-based funding are accountability funding
systems based on quantifiable student and university outcomes (e.g., degree completion). Such
policies, typically use one-size-fits-all metrics and measures that often ignore the impact of
racism on the realities of individual institutions (Jones et al., 2017). These types of policies result
in race-neutral and colorblind policies. In addition, the political climate also shapes how higher
education practitioners engage in conversations about race on campus (Harper & Hurtado, 2007).
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 13

Harper and Patton (2007) offered three explanations as to why higher education practitioners
avoid topics of race. First, engaging in a conversation about race implies a willingness to deal
with guilt, discomfort, and frustration. Second, discussing race brings to surface the reality that
racism exists and will likely not disappear. Finally, by accepting the reality of racism in one’s
campus, it turns the responsibility on higher education practitioners to address racial inequities.
Critical race researchers argue that policymakers and educational leaders who create
policies to further racial diversity must align them with efforts to address racial inequities
(Carter, Skiba, Arredondo, & Pollock, 2017; Garces, 2014). However, these policies will
ultimately rely on tenure-track and tenured professors who have direct contact with students and
active roles in higher education governance (Bensimon, 2007; Bragg, McCambly, & Durham,
2016; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015). Tenure-track and tenured faculty can change structures that
maintain racial inequities. In addition to professional autonomy for intellectual pursuits
(Stromquist, 2017), a growing body of literature describes professors’ motivation and
commitment to contribute to the public good (O’Meara et al., 2008; O’Meara, 2008; Rhoades,
Kiyama, McCormick, & Quiroz, 2008; Shaker, 2015).
However, racial inequities also exist in the professoriate. In the fall of 2015, 75% of
assistant professors, 77% of associate professors, and 83% of full professors were white (NCES,
2015). In contrast, just 25% of assistant professors, 22% of associate professors, and 16% of full
professors were from a racially minoritized group (NCES, 2015). Numerous examples exist in
the literature that exemplifies the ways racial identity shapes how racially minoritized professors
make sense of their professional identity and engage in their research, teaching, and service
(Baez, 2000; Delgado-Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; Griffin, Pifer, Humphrey, & Hazelwood,
2011; Levin, Walker, Haberler, & Jackson-Boothby, 2013). The stress racially minoritized
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 14

professors experience from being de-professionalized when their white faculty colleagues
devalue their scholarship and undermine their autonomy and independence contribute to their
low levels of satisfaction which can lead to their departure from academia (Eagan & Garvey,
2015; Jayakumar, Howard, Allen, & Han, 2009). To avoid negative labels, isolation, and
marginalization, racially minoritized professors report remaining silent in the face of racial
micro-aggressions, tokenization, and other forms of discrimination (Ford, 2011; Monzó &
SooHoo, 2014; Smith, 2015; Turner, 2002).
Historically, the professoriate privileges epistemologies, theories, and methods rooted in
white, male, and Western norms (Gonzales, 2018; Patton, 2016). The intellectual work of
racially minoritized faculty challenges professional boundaries because it is rooted in community
work, personal experience, and practice (Baez, 2000; Gonzales, 2018). The racial inequities in
faculty representation matter because racially minoritized professors are more likely to use their
research (Delgado & Bernal, 2002) and civic engagement (Baez, 2000; Quaye, Shaw, & Hill,
2017) to advance social justice efforts. Understanding the efforts of professors to promote racial
equity in student outcomes (e.g., graduation) and faculty participation (e.g., tenure-track and
tenured appointments) contributes to the literature on racial equity in higher education.
Research Focus and Questions
My dissertation research investigates the ways professors enact their agency to advance
racial equity in different areas of faculty life (e.g., student advising, faculty hiring). Borrowing
from Baez (2000), Gonzales (2014), and O’Meara and Campbell (2011), I define faculty agency
as having the sense of power, will, and desire to take concrete actions to resist environments
marked by domination and oppression and create a space of legitimacy within academia. This
dissertation is composed of three academic papers to investigate how professors’ personal and
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 15

professional experiences shape their interactions with their context in determining their actions
when promoting racial equity. Each paper examines faculty agency in different settings, such as
student advising, classroom teaching, and faculty hiring, to advance racial equity. Taking this
approach allows for a more in-depth analysis of faculty agency and how it is shaped by and how
it shapes the historical, cultural, and social elements inside and outside a university. For example,
within a university, the rules, assumptions, and practices embedded in teaching are just as
different as they are between research and faculty hiring. The challenges faculty encounter in the
classroom is different than those in faculty hiring committees.
For each paper, I used a combination of critical, organizational, and sociocultural
learning theories to investigate faculty agency as it relates to implementing racial equity in
practices (e.g., student advising) and university policies (e.g., faculty hiring). The data for each
paper was collected from different types of four-year colleges
2
. This dissertation conceptualizes
the intersection of agency and structure as an opportunity for faculty learning about how to
address racial inequities in student retention and faculty hiring. By taking this approach to study
faculty agency, my dissertation shows how campus supports for (and barriers to) faculty agency
vary by organizational mission and identity that espouse and create different contexts,
opportunities, and constraints for racial equity efforts.
This dissertation research is well-positioned to inform education policymakers,
practitioners, and researchers about the development and learning mechanisms of professors
integrating their institutional responsibilities (e.g., research, student advising, and faculty

2
As I outline in the “Methodology and Methods of Dissertation Research,” Chapter two draws on data from a larger
case study of an action research project within a state university system that implemented the Equity Scorecard. The
data from Chapters three and four come from the same private, liberal-arts, and religiously-affiliated four-year
university. In chapter three, the data is from a ten-month inquiry-based intervention faculty participated in to change
their faculty hiring policy and practices. The data for chapter four is from faculty who served on faculty search
committees and made efforts to hire racially minoritized professors.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 16

governance) and social justice efforts. Also, the study lends broader insight into how professors
manage and negotiate their different professional responsibilities to address racial equity across
multiple professional activities. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how
professors learn to advance racial equity in different areas of faculty life. The study answers the
following research questions:
1) What are the experiences of professors advancing racial equity in different areas of
faculty life?
2) How do professors implement racial equity in different areas of faculty life?
3) How do professors respond to challenges they encounter in their efforts to implement
racial equity?
I collected data of professors involved in different activities to focus on the variation in faculty
agentic perspectives (e.g., reflection) and actions (e.g., behaviors) to implement racial equity in
academic admissions, student retention, student advising (paper 1), faculty culture (paper 2), and
faculty search committees (paper 3). Through a narrative inquiry approach, I analyzed data from
two research sites where professors participated in inquiry-based interventions to learn how
practices and policies have a disproportional impact on the academic experiences of racially
minoritized students and faculty.
In this introduction to the three empirical papers reporting my findings, I first review the
literature on faculty socialization and agency to argue that faculty agency for racial equity is a
constant interaction between professors’ social location and structure. This framing is
consequential because professors enter racial equity work with different levels of comfort and
experiences with race and racism. Then I describe narrative inquiry as the methodological
approach followed by a discussion of the context in which professors in each study participated
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 17

in inquiry-based interventions. Although this dissertation is not evaluating the effectiveness of
inquiry-based interventions on faculty agency, it is significant to describe the type of
professional development faculty participants received to interrogate their campus culture with
the intention to develop racial equity goals. Finally, I outline each paper where I contextualize
each research site, identify the data collection tools, and address the steps I took to increase the
credibility of the findings.
Literature Review
Faculty socialization could become an obstacle for professors to address issues of racial
equity in different areas of faculty life. The majority of faculty are not socialized and trained to
address racial inequity in their graduate programs (Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Gardner, 2010;
Rhoades et al., 2008). Instead, faculty behavior and actions are in response to changing political
landscapes (Gonzales, 2012; 2014; 2015; Shaker, 2015; Stromquist, 2017; Terosky & Gonzales,
2016), such as neoliberal ideologies of success restraining professors from fully engaging in
work for the greater good (Rhoades, 2015; Shaker, 2015). Well-intended faculty members’
values of equal opportunity, colorblindness, and meritocracy could keep them from addressing
structural forms of racism on their campus (Dowd & Bensimon, 2015; Haney-López, 2010;
Laughter, 2013). The tenure and promotion system also rarely, if ever, rewards professors for
service work such as addressing racial equity (O’Meara, 2010). For example, the implicit beliefs
of change of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics professors are driven by their
experiences of being isolated in their departments, being trained in rationalistic and data-driven
disciplines, and relying heavily on funding to promote their research (Kezar et al., 2015).
How professors prioritize their work depends on their campus mission and institutional
type; in addition, to their social and professional identities. For example, faculty working at
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 18

doctoral universities are expected to publish in top-tier peer-reviewed journals and to produce
research at the highest levels (Rhoades, 2015; Terosky & Gonzales, 2016), particularly those in
higher education campuses that award at least 20% doctoral degrees are classified as moderate to
high research universities (The Carnegie Classification of Institutions, 2018). Faculty members
working at colleges and universities that award at least 50% master’s degrees and fewer than
20% doctoral degrees might not be expected to publish in top-tier journals or publish as much as
their colleagues at doctoral universities. Moreover, faculty working at campuses that award at
least 50% bachelor’s degrees and award fewer than 50% master’s degrees are most likely to be
rewarded for student-center teaching approaches and service involvement (The Carnegie
Classification of Institutions, 2018). Professors in less research-intensive universities might
receive more administrative support to engage in racial equity work because of the focus on
student learning. Although professors work in different types of universities, most were
socialized as researchers in graduate school.
Socialization as Researchers
Faculty members are socialized as researchers in graduate school (Austin & Mcdaniels,
2006; Austin, 2002; Bieber & Worley, 2006; Nyquist et al., 1999; O'Meara, Bennet, & Neihaus,
2016; Rosch & Reich, 1996; Trowler & Knight, 2000) and as new professionals (Austin, 2002;
Lawrence, Celis, & Ott, 2014; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996). As researchers, professors are
specialists and experts in their fields (Austin & Mcdaniels, 2006; Austin, 2002). Faculty
members’ motivation for truth and desire to learn distinguishes them from other professionals
because they can use their scholarly learning to contribute to the public good (Shaker, 2015).
Scholarly learning, according to Neumann (2009), is the construction of knowledge that relies on
the thinker’s inner engagement with the subject at hand. Faculty members are learners when they
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 19

use their personal, social, and interpersonal experiences to draw out new understandings about
problems, puzzles, or images (Neumann & Peterson, 1997).
The majority of professors who receive their graduate training at research-intensive
universities are not prepared to meet educational demands in the 21
st
century (Austin &
Mcdaniels, 2006) and, according to Austin (2002), most faculty do not get appropriate mentoring
to teach, advise, and write research grants to receive external funding. Faculty socialization
becomes an obstacle to meet the demands of racialized groups to advocate for racial equity when
professors operate within the boundaries of their disciplines; in addition, to their campuses not
rewarding their social justice efforts. As I outline below, professors’ social identities (e.g., race,
gender, sexuality) and professional identities (e.g., professional rank, discipline) shape the ways
they enact their agency in academia.
Faculty Agency
Professors who want to improve racial equity must change the very structures that grant
them their autonomy and rewards their efforts. The culture of questioning and creating
knowledge characterize college and university missions that give tenure-track and tenured
faculty academic freedom and autonomy to engage in the individual agency to decide what to
teach and what to research (Boyer, 1990; Stromquist, 2017). For these reasons, faculty agency is
significant to understand how and why professors implement equity-minded practices and
policies in different areas of faculty life. Researchers have investigated faculty agency to
understand career advancement and resistance to oppressive academic environments.
The first stream of research has identified the societal, organizational, and individual
factors that facilitate and hinder faculty agency for career advancement (Campbell & O’Meara,
2014; O’Meara, Terosky, & Neumann, 2008; O’Meara, Rivera, Kuvaeva, & Corrigan, 2017).
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 20

Much like organizations, professors are not immune to societal forces that shape how they think
and behave (Campbell & O’Meara, 2014; Gonzales, 2014; Gonzales & Terosky, 2016). The
growing interest in college and university administration to quantify scholarly productivity and
manage faculty production create environments that require faculty to align their work with
neoliberal practices, such as grant writing and publishing in top-tier journals (Levin & Aliyeva,
2015; Rhoads, 2015; Shaker, 2015; Slaugther & Leslie, 1997; Stromquist, 2017). For example,
the rise in universities and colleges striving to move up national rankings creates tensions for
faculty to meet research demands at the expense of teaching and service (Gardner, 2010; 2013;
Gonzales, 2014; 2015; O’Meara, 2007).
The literature described above profoundly relies on sociological perspectives to define
agency as the ability to construct one’s context for learning and development in professional and
intellectual ways (O’Meara et al., 2008). Faculty members can express their agency in at least
two distinctive but related ways (Campbell & O’Meara, 2014; Terosky, O’Meara, & Campbell,
2014). First, agentic perspectives are when professors take on strategic views on human
experiences in ways that advance individual or group goals. Second, agentic actions are when
professors change their life trajectories through strategic tasks and steps. For tenure-track and
tenured faculty, their perspectives have a strong influence on their actions (Campbell &
O’Meara, 2014). This relationship is evident in the ways faculty members’ perceptions of their
departmental structure and culture influence their agentic actions. For example, if faculty
perceive that their department is supportive of their intellectual growth (O’Meara et al., 2017),
family-work balance (O’Meara & Campbell, 2011), and values (Terosky et al., 2014) then they
are more likely to take actions to advance their careers (Campbell & O’Meara, 2014).
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 21

At the individual level, social networks (Kiyama, Lee, & Rhoads, 2012; Niehaus &
O’Meara, 2015; O’Meara & Stromquist, 2015), self-efficacy (Terosky et al., 2014), and personal
and professional histories (Gonzales, 2014; 2018) shape faculty agency. For example, peer
networks among faculty with minoritized identities (e.g., race, gender) create opportunities to
engage in dialogue for sharing challenges, brainstorming solutions, and validating experiences
and knowledge (Espino, Munoz, & Marquez Kiyama, 2010; Gonzales, Murakami, & Núñez,
2013; Niehaus & O’Meara, 2015). Although peer networks are essential for career advancement,
faculty with external professional networks report having a stronger sense of agency for career
advancement (Niehaus & O’Meara, 2015). In the context of universities striving for prestige,
Gonzales (2014) argued that professors’ academic training and their worldviews shaped their
agency to craft an academic career. She found that faculty who received their doctoral training at
research-intensive universities were more likely to align their agency to support their institution’s
striving efforts. The idea that faculty members’ social identities play a role in their agentic
perspectives and actions aligns with the second strand developed by critical race feminist
scholars.
Scholars who use critical perspectives argue that faculty agency looks different for
racially minoritized professors. In addition to advancing their careers, racially minoritized
professors enact their agentic perspectives and actions to navigate and survive oppressive
environments (Gonzales, 2018; Griffin, Pifer, Humphrey, & Hazelwood, 2011; Martinez, Chang,
& Welton, 2017; Perry, Moore, Edwards, Acosta, & Frey, 2009; Sulé, 2014). Battilana (2006)
argued that individuals’ social position influences their perceptions of the context that shapes
their stance in the (re)distribution of power and resources. Similarly, faculty members’ past
experiences, current situations, and future circumstances influence their agentic perspectives that
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 22

shape their agentic behaviors (Gonzales, 2018; O’Meara, 2015). Critical race feminists have
contested that the social location of racially minoritized faculty, primarily women, is located
within the boundaries of different worlds (Collins, 2015; Crenshaw, 1991; Sulé, 2014). As
faculty, racially minoritized individuals have an insider status in academia, but the
intersectionality of their minoritized identities (e.g., race, gender, sexuality) places them as
outsiders within the professoriate. For example, Black women faculty members’ social location
gives them insight into multiple forms of knowledge that allows them to interrogate social
inequities and legitimate their presence (Sulé, 2014). However, the reward system does not value
the unique perspectives and approaches that racially minoritized faculty bring because they do
not align with disciplinary canons (Turner et al., 2008).
Faculty agency is a dialectic relationship between agency and structure because
depending on their organizational status professors make conscious and unconscious choices to
reproduce, negotiate, or transform norms and structures. For example, Sulé (2014) found that
Black women professors encountered professional socialization experiences that facilitated their
agency to simultaneously challenge the legacy of exclusion and justify their existence within the
professoriate. Black women professors were more likely to enact professional norms that aligned
with their standpoint while discarding professional norms that conflicted with their standpoint.
Similarly, Gonzales (2018) found that racially minoritized women faculty minded professional
boundaries to align their intellectual work with the norms of the professoriate, but were more
likely to subvert boundaries by doing interdisciplinary work, prioritizing practice, and deploying
their subjectivities in their scholarship with the intention to transform professional norms. When
racially minoritized professors encounter racist and oppressive environments their agency
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 23

becomes an act of resistance by choosing to depart, negotiate, or resist structures (Baez, 2000;
Griffin et al., 2011).
Ching (2018) found that social context can spark different responses to racial equity and
that the influence of social context changes over time. Focusing on professors’ social location
provides opportunities for nuanced understandings of their agentic perspectives and actions to
advance racial equity in different areas of faculty life. From this perspective, who faculty are
matters just as much as where they are and with whom they are interacting. The strategies they
use to advance racial equity will vary across social context within the boundaries of academia. In
the following section, I outline the literature on professors participating in inquiry-based
interventions to develop the capacity to identify and address racial equity.
Inquiry-Based Interventions as Opportunities to Advance Racial Equity
In the context of growing racial tensions and protests on college campuses, the American
Educational Research Association (AERA) has called on faculty members to examine “how
school environments may exacerbate race bias and racism.” In making this call, AERA also
pointed out that educators need to receive “tools, training, and support” to address racism,
because “we know far too little about how to intervene in or transcend [this] deeply rooted
systemic problem” (AERA, 2015). Equity researchers advocate for practitioners, such as faculty,
to examine institutional level data to question structures that maintain racial inequity and to
identify practices to ameliorate such injustices (Bensimon, 2005; Bragg et al., 2016; Dowd &
Liera, 2018; Felix, Bensimon, Hanson, Gray, & Klingsmith, 2015; Jenkins, Wachen, Moore, &
Shulock, 2012; Mayer et al., 2014; Sidman-Taveau & Hoffman, 2018). However, data-driven
decision-making is insufficient without activities to help professors explore the problem or issue
(Kezar, Gehrke, & Elrod, 2015).
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 24

Bensimon (2005, 2007) argues that addressing racial equity requires inquiry-based
interventions for professors to reflect on their concept of equity, their role as advocates for
racially minoritized students, the extent to which their practices serve racially minoritized
students, and the changes they can make to achieve racial equity. With roots in neo-Marxism and
human rights activism, an inquiry is a process designed to bring together researchers and
practitioners to develop a sense of shared ownership of research projects; collectively analyze
social problems; and take action to transform the local environment (Kemmis & McTaggart,
2000). Inquiry-based interventions designed to help practitioners address racial equity provide
practitioners with the tools and language to study how their practices and assumptions, and those
of their colleagues, reproduce racial inequity (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Bragg et al., 2016;
Dowd & Bensimon, 2015; Dowd & Liera, 2018; Dowd, Bishop, & Bensimon, 2015; Felix et al.,
2015; Kezar, Glenn, Lester, & Nakamoto, 2008). For example, data disaggregated by race helps
professors identify where there is evidence of inequality by race and identify practices that have
a direct (e.g., faculty expertise) and indirect (e.g., faculty hiring practices) impact on student
outcomes (Felix et al., 2015). Data disaggregated by race has helped professors create a sense of
agency to evaluate structures, programs, and offices that impede the success of racially
minoritized students (Dowd et al., 2015; Felix et al., 2015; Peña, 2012).
The majority of inquiry-based interventions focus on guiding practitioners to develop the
cognitive framework of equity-mindedness. Faculty who are equity-minded are aware of the
sociocultural context of exclusionary practices, are critical of racism in higher education, and are
conscious of the impact of power asymmetries on opportunities and outcomes (Bensimon &
Malcom, 2012). Being equity-minded means that faculty members interpret equity gaps as
evidence that something is wrong with organizational structures, practices, policies, and culture,
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 25

rather than a problem of racially minoritized groups’ ability and background (Bensimon &
Malcom, 2012). Professors who are equity-minded: (a) are aware and critical about the role of
race in shaping higher education experiences and inequities (Dowd & Bensimon, 2015); (b) are
reflective about how changes in everyday practices and behaviors can change student
experiences (Bensimon, 2007; Rueda, 2012); (c) are considerate about equity as a measure of
outcomes and not as a measure of representation (Dowd, 2003; 2007); (d) and utilize data to
investigate practices and policies that contribute to racial equity gaps (Felix, et al., 2015).
However, practitioners’ existing conceptions of equity (Ching, 2018) and their past experiences
with race and racism (Bishop, 2014) challenge their development of equity-mindedness.
Equity researchers have focused on professors from all levels of higher education,
including community college (Bustillos et al., 2011; Ching, 2018; Felix et al., 2015), public-four-
year college (Bishop, 2014; Dowd et al., 2015; Dowd & Liera, 2018), and private liberal arts
college (Peña, 2012). Studies on professors participating in inquiry-based interventions have
found that faculty participants re-evaluate their assumptions about the behaviors of racially
minoritized students (Bustillos et al., 2011), gain understanding of how culturally relevant texts
can create positive classroom experiences for racially minoritized students (Rueda, 2012),
develop critical and racial consciousness when interacting with racially minoritized students
(Peña, 2012), and come to establish a sense of agency to work for equity (Bishop, 2014). These
are important gains. However, even professors who develop the capacity to notice and question
historical patterns of racial exclusion and assume the responsibility to eliminate racial inequity
face challenges to implement equity outside structured inquiry settings (Dowd & Bensimon,
2015).
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 26

Taking into consideration the literature reviewed thus far, the unit of analysis in this
dissertation is the interaction between professors’ social location and structure. The prior
research on professors addressing racial equity focuses on their involvement in inquiry-based
interventions and highlight how tools mediate faculty learning and agency for racial equity (e.g.,
data disaggregated by race; Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015). However, in
this dissertation, I focus on how professors’ social location, including their personal and
professional experiences with racism, interacts with their organizational status (e.g., race, gender,
professional rank) to determine their actions to implement racial equity. Instead of focusing on
how inquiry tools mediate faculty to develop the conceptual understanding of racial equity, this
dissertation identifies the ways “historicized lessons and experiences deemed some approaches
to [racial equity] work more appropriate or legitimate than others” (Gonzales, 2014, p. 211).
Thus, a critical examination of professors engaged in racial equity work is crucial to understand
how the interaction between contextual characteristics interrelates with social location to
facilitate or impede faculty agency to address issues of racial equity. This is significant because
understanding faculty agency to implement racial equity may help reshape policies and practices
that create the conditions to support the implementation of racial equity in important functions of
academic life such as academic admissions, student retention, and faculty hiring, all of which are
issues that are addressed by faculty in my empirical studies. In the next section, I outline the
methodological approach used in each of the three studies followed by an overview of the type of
inquiry-based interventions professors participated at their campuses.
Methodology and Methods of Dissertation Research
The research design for each empirical study is a narrative inquiry of professors
advancing racial equity in multiple areas of faculty life. Narrative inquiry is an appropriate
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 27

approach because the focus is on how professors made sense of their experiences interacting with
their context to advance racial equity in spaces where racial equity is not the norm (Daiute, 2014;
Souto-Manning, 2014). In line with the literature on faculty agency, narrative inquiry allows me
to focus on how professors interact with their context to make sense of their experiences
implementing racial equity (Souto-Manning, 2014).
There are multiple approaches to narrative inquiry that are used to focus on different
aspects of peoples’ lives (Chase, 2005). Narrative inquiry provides a window into the
experiences of faculty living in organizations and institutions because the focus is on stories
(Chase, 2005; Daiute, 2014; Souto-Manning, 2014), which communicate a point of view,
organize objects and events into meaningful wholes, and maintain, defend, or challenge the
status quo (Chase, 2005; Daiute, 2014; Souto-Manning, 2014). In applying narrative inquiry,
researchers stay true to the individual (Riessman, 1993) by focusing on individual experiences
with issues within and across individuals and groups (Daiute, 2014). From this perspective,
narrative inquiry is not about the accuracy of the events narrators describe; instead, the focus is
about how narrators reconstruct their experiences during tense events (Daiute, 2014; Souto-
Manning, 2014).
Dynamic narrative inquiry views storytelling as a cultural tool to interact with, rather than
narrate, life (Daiute, 2014). Through narratives, people make sense of themselves and their
environments. Dynamic narrative inquiry is compatible with how I defined faculty agency as the
concrete actions professors employ to earn or maintain a space of legitimacy within academia
(Gonzales, 2014) because it foregrounds tensions. According to Daiute, “tensions are evidence of
interaction—when we assume that people use narratives to do something, each use involves
some acknowledgment and interaction with context” (2014, p. 250). Souto-Manning (2014)
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 28

combined critical discourse analysis and narrative inquiry to focus on the relationship between
institutional discourses and everyday individual narratives. Dynamic narrative inquiry from a
critical perspective enables me to examine how narrators recycle institutional discourses in their
conversational narratives, both of which act to construct the realities of people inside
organizations. My focus in data analysis is not to identify each life story, but instead to use
dynamic narrative inquiry through a critical narrative lens to investigate how professors’ social
location shapes their stories about advancing racial equity and how these stories inform and are
informed by systems of power.
Qualitative analysis occurs alongside data collection. This overarching process allows
researchers to make connections between the data and to refine the questions and findings of the
study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I conducted data analysis according to established qualitative
research procedures involving the following steps: first I wrote short reflective memos during
data collection describing the settings and emerging impressions. Second, I described possible
connections between new and previously collected data. Third, I began to code, deductively and
inductively, as themes emerge. Fourth, I identified the skeleton of the story, which in this case
focused on faculty agency for racial equity. Daiute’s (2014) analytical method of plot analysis
supplies a lens that guides “perception, memory, and interpretation of the dramas in life” (p. 114)
and connects my study’s research questions with data, through data analyses. In chapters two,
three, and four I delve deeper into the analytical approach of each empirical study. In the
following sections, I describe the inquiry-based interventions faculty participants were involved
in each empirical research.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 29

The Equity Scorecard as the Inquiry-Based Intervention in Chapter Two
In chapter two, the data came from a larger case study of an action research project from
a state university system that implemented the Equity Scorecard from 2011 to 2013. The Center
for Urban Education’s (CUE) Equity Scorecard is a multi-year reform initiative grounded in a
“practitioner-as-researcher” model in which practitioners “creat[e] knowledge about local
problems as seen from a local perspective” (Bensimon, Polkinghorne, Bauman, & Vallejo, 2004,
p. 108). Senior leaders create teams of faculty members and administrators, known as evidence
teams, to participate in the Equity Scorecard (facilitated by CUE) to investigate patterns of racial
equity in areas such as access, retention, and graduation (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012). CUE has
implemented the Equity Scorecard in over 60 universities and colleges across five states (Dowd
& Bensimon, 2015, p. 29) and is currently, in 2018, being implemented at seven community
colleges.
The action research process of the Equity Scorecard at the 14 university state system
unfolded through an 18-month, multi-phase process of inquiry (Bensimon & Malcolm, 2012;
Dowd & Bensimon, 2015) to address racial equity gaps in access, retention, and college
completion of students. In the first nine months, the faculty focused on issues of college access
while they focused on retention during the last nine months of the Equity Scorecard. Teams were
created at each academic institution to address racial inequities in student outcomes. Team
members consisted of administrators, staff, and faculty, who were trained as practitioner-
researchers to conduct an inquiry into existing institutional data (Bensimon et al., 2004) by CUE
researchers and staff members who acted as data coaches and intermediaries. The evidence teams
were asked to transform numerical and qualitative data into knowledge to identify policies and
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 30

practices that marginalized racially minoritized students and to present findings to the broader
campus community (Bensimon & Hanson, 2012).
Since different change initiatives were simultaneously implemented or followed one
another when the Equity Scorecard was implemented at the 14 universities, institutional actors
were often part of more than one project. For example, some faculty participants were involved
in both Educational Delivery Institute and Equity Scorecard projects. Their dual involvement
sometimes resulted in recalling experiences in one project when trying to recall them for the
other project. The goal of the overall study and this study was not to evaluate the impact of one
project over the other project; instead, the focus was on how faculty members implemented
racial equity in academic admissions, retention, and graduation.
Inquiry and Racial Equity in Faculty Hiring for Chapters Three and Four
The data in the studies presented in chapters three and four came from a private,
religiously-affiliated university where the provost invested monetary resources in creating a team
of faculty to participate in a ten-month inquiry-based intervention. CUE facilitators and
researchers organized seven professional development workshops to guide the team of professors
in inquiry about their culture around faculty hiring. Through a series of activities, the group of
professors interrogated the ways their campus culture impeded efforts to hire racially minoritized
professors and developed the critical knowledge to change recruiting strategies, job
announcements, and evaluation (e.g., interview questions) and decision-making. Chapter three
focuses on the professors participating in the inquiry-based intervention to change their practices
and policies in faculty hiring to increase the number of racially minoritized professors on
campus. Chapter four focuses on professors who are on faculty search committees and who are
implementing racial equity.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 31

Overview of Dissertation
My dissertation uses data from two different sites. Faculty members from each site
participated in organized change initiatives, based on inquiry methods, to address issues with
racial equity. In the first field setting, faculty members work at five predominantly white
comprehensive public universities and in the second at a more diverse private, liberal arts and
religiously affiliated college. The differences in organizational missions and faculty involvement
provide valuable variation in the field settings. This variation enables me to advance knowledge
about different contexts that facilitate faculty members’ agency in different types of
organizational settings (e.g., different kinds of departments, scholarly disciplines, and campus
cultures).
This dissertation is composed of three empirical papers since I am interested in the
multiple ways faculty enact their agency to implement equity in various areas of faculty life.
Although the theoretical frameworks in each paper complement each other, I use different
theories in each chapter (more information below) to highlight the multiple ways professors
respond to their environments to enact their agency. While all of the papers are designed as
narrative inquiry studies, each paper has different data collection plans to identify similarities
and differences across multiple four-year college campuses. The unifying thread across chapters
two, three, and four is the focus on professors’ agentic perspectives and actions promoting racial
equity.
In the first study, presented in chapter two, I use the conceptual framework of boundary
crossing to examine how 12 professors from five comprehensive universities in the same higher
education system learn to advance racial equity while being between the boundaries of
disciplinary departments and program offices. Akkerman’s and Bakker’s (2011) four learning
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 32

mechanisms allows me to conceptualize professors as boundary spanners who learn to develop
multiple strategies because of their unique positions to integrate racial equity into disciplinary
departments and program offices. Ultimately, their ability to cross organizational subunits (e.g.,
departments, program offices) depends on how faculty view their relationships with student
affairs offices and faculty colleagues, which requires consistent reflection of power relations.
In chapter three, I further investigate faculty agency for racial equity by moving from
individual efforts to group efforts. In this study, I apply cultural-historical activity theory
(CHAT) to examine how a group of 17 professors at a private, liberal-arts and religiously-
affiliated university interrogate their campus culture to advance racial equity in faculty hiring. In
addition to conceptualizing faculty as boundary spanners, as I did in chapter two, I emphasize the
emotional component associated with interrogating and changing systems of power in regards to
racial equity. The findings demonstrate how the administration’s public support, articulation of
the change initiative, and commitment to ensuring that the effort is faculty-led are essential
organizational conditions to navigate adverse and heightened emotional situations in regards to
racial equity in faculty hiring.
In the third study, which is presented in chapter four, I bring together boundary work,
activity systems, and intersectionality to analyze how faculty advance racial equity as members
of faculty search committees. I construct a conceptual framework that allows me to focus on the
sociocultural and historical aspects of faculty search committees, analyze faculty search
committees as a unit of analysis, and take into consideration the ways converging identities
intersect with the production of power. In this study, I find that faculty agency for racial equity
relies on peer networks, reflections, and actions that reproduce, negotiate, and transform
structures. The fifth and final chapter of this dissertation draws upon the findings from the three
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 33

studies to lay out the research and practical implications for faculty agency to address racial
equity.
Since the literature on faculty agency and inquiry is pertinent for each empirical study,
there is some repetition of large bodies of literature I review in chapters two, three, and four.
However, each chapter builds on the previous by changing the setting of faculty agency for racial
equity, the application of different conceptual frameworks, and the collection of different data. In
the following chapter, I present the first study which focuses on faculty who participated in the
Equity Scorecard and how they enact their agency to implement equity in student retention at the
policy and individual levels.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 34

Chapter 2: Faculty Learning at Boundaries to Broker Racial Equity
3

National reports (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013) and high-profile racially charged incidents
(Museus, Ledesma, & Parker, 2015) underscore the reality of racism on college campuses. In the
context of growing racial tensions, students have also demanded racial diversity among the
faculty and racial literacy among white professors (AERA, 2015; We the Protestors, 2015).
Several higher education scholars have developed theoretical frameworks and tools to account
for the racial realities racially minoritized students’ experience (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012;
Hurtado, Milem, Calyton-Pedersen, & Allen, 1998; Museus, 2014). Racially minoritized students
are more likely to encounter unwelcoming campus environments and hostile racial climate
(Hurtado, Griffin, Arellano, & Cuellar, 2008; Worthington, Navarro, Loewy, & Hart, 2008),
which play a role in the existence of racial inequities in student outcomes (e.g., retention,
graduation; Dowd, Sawatzky, & Korn, 2011). Faculty can be significant in addressing racial
equity in student outcomes because of their direct contact with students, their responsibility for
research, teaching, and service, and their longevity working in the same institution (Bensimon,
2007; Bragg & Durham, 2012). In this study, racial equity is both an outcome and a process. As
an outcome, racial equity is about allocating the greatest resources to those with the greatest
needs (Dowd, 2007). As a process, racial equity requires professors to be race-conscious to
emphasize racial differences and attend to the needs of racially minoritized groups (Dowd &
Bensimon, 2015), critical about the relationship between race and power (Bensimon & Malcom,

3
This study is co-authored with Dr. Alicia C. Dowd, who is the principal investigator of the overarching research
project on data use. For this study on “Faculty Learning at Boundaries to Broker Racial Equity,” I was responsible
for the majority of literature review focused on faculty agency, data analysis, conceptualization of the findings, and
writing the manuscript for the dissertation and peer-reviewed journal article. Since there are two authors for this
study, I use “we” to describe decisions Dr. Dowd and I made throughout the development of this research study.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 35

2012), racially literate to name and change structures that preserve white advantage, and
empower racially minoritized groups (Garces & Gordon da Cruz, 2017).
Professors who address issues of racial equity often engage in individual, rather than
collective, action (Felix, Bensimon, Hanson, Gray, & Klingsmith, 2015; Peña, 2012). For
example, faculty may reach out to racially minoritized students or develop a special program that
provides academic support; less prevalent are cases of faculty who work across departments to
enact structural changes within the institution for racial equity. As noted in chapter one, this
finding is unsurprising considering that faculty are socialized and employed within specific fields
and are not typically trained to have multiple contacts with a variety of departments and program
offices (Bensimon & Neumann, 1993). Most professors are not socialized and trained in their
graduate programs to address racial equity (Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Gardner, 2010). Instead,
faculty are socialized to be professionals in disciplinary fields bounded by prevailing
epistemologies, theories, and methods (Lamont, 2009; Posselt, 2016) that are rooted in white,
male, and Western norms (Delgado-Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; Gonzales, 2018; Patton, 2016).
Professors who decide to pursue equity goals may be hampered by colleagues who do not
perceive aspirations for social justice to align with faculty cultural norms (Delgado &
Villalpando, 2002). For these reasons, faculty who aspire to advocate for equity goals at a
systemic level could feel hindered if the norms of racial equity conflict with accepted norms of
faculty work.
Equity researchers emphasize the role of inquiry-based interventions to help faculty
reflect on their conceptions of equity and examine their role as advocates for racially minoritized
students (Bensimon, 2007, Bragg & Durham, 2012; Sidman-Taveau & Hoffman, 2018). Inquiry
is the systematic use of data to produce knowledge about a local problem and develop the
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 36

expertise to change institutional structures, policies, and practices (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
2009; Reason, 1994). Equity researchers study how race-conscious tools (e.g., data disaggregated
by race) help practitioners develop the mindset to produce equity for racially minoritized
students (Bensimon & Dowd, 2012; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015). The subjects in these studies
have included professors working at community colleges who re-evaluated their assumptions
about the behaviors of racially minoritized students (Bustillos, Rueda, & Bensimon, 2011),
public four-year universities who revamped their selection criteria from relying on SAT scores to
using more holistic indicators to admit more racially minoritized students (Dowd & Bensimon,
2015), and private four-year universities who re-conceptualized their teaching and advising
practices to better support racially minoritized students (Peña, 2012). One such initiative is the
Center for Urban Education’s (CUE) Equity Scorecard, which has been used by over 60
universities and colleges across five states (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Dowd & Bensimon,
2015). Similar to other capacity-building change initiatives (Bragg, McCambly, & Durham,
2016; Mayer et al., 2014), the Equity Scorecard is an initiative that equips faculty with language
and tools to embed equity into research, service, and teaching. The Equity Scorecard requires
practitioners to use institutional data regarding student success disaggregated by race to identify
patterns of racial inequity on their campuses. Institutional data disaggregated by race helps
practitioners see patterns of where inequities exist and which practices and policies might be
contributing to the existence of such injustices (Felix et al., 2015).
While the scholarship on racial equity contributes to our understanding of how inquiry-
based interventions help faculty make changes to individual practices, further research is still
needed. Professors who wish to implement racial equity in student outcomes may feel hampered
because of a lack of resources for professional development in this area, an uncertain sense of
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 37

authority within larger university power structures, and professional norms that prioritize faculty
roles in other areas, especially research and teaching (O’Meara, 2010). The experiences of
professors working toward racial equity outside inquiry-based interventions have been
overlooked in the relevant literature. Researchers have not thoroughly investigated the ways
professors rely on their social location to advance equity goals in different areas of faculty life
(Campbell & O’Meara, 2014; Gonzales, 2018; Sulé, 2014). This study contributes to the
literature on racial equity by focusing on faculty agency in the Equity Scorecard team, in
campus-wide change, and in individual practice.
This case study uses narrative inquiry and the theoretical constructs of boundary crossing
and boundary objects to examine the experience of 12 faculty from five comprehensive public
four-year universities who acted as boundary spanners and exercised agency for racial equity by
coordinating change in multiple areas of faculty work. Boundaries exist between settings when
actors in those settings use socially constructed and taken-for-granted criteria to define their
work and roles in those settings in contrast to other settings (Engeström, 2008; Lamont, 2009).
For example, faculty judgments about evaluation criteria are based on their discipline’s
normative demands (e.g., theories, methods, priorities) for faculty work (Lamont, 2009; Posselt,
2016).
Two research questions guided this study:
1) What experiences do faculty have when they work across disciplinary departments
and program offices of higher education to pursue racial equity goals?
2) In what ways do faculty use artifacts (e.g., language about equity, data disaggregated
by race) when working across the silos of higher education?
a. What do they learn in doing so?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 38

b. What helps or keeps them from learning or growing in their roles as faculty?
Boundary crossing and boundary objects are promising concepts to investigate faculty agency in
multiple areas because it highlights how professors’ interactions and transitions across different
sites are opportunities to learn about differences in knowledge and practices and how to integrate
those differences towards structural change. As seen in Table 2.1., we contribute to the literature
on faculty agency by showing that the experience of advancing racial equity is fostered by
successful and unsuccessful attempts at brokering change across multiple settings. By exploring
faculty participation in multiple settings where they hold different levels of authority, this study
also adds to the literature on racial equity, which typically focuses on a single practice setting
(e.g., teaching or governance). Faculty involvement in system-level racial equity efforts is
critical because of their authority over student admissions and assessment, which determine who
gets into college and who succeeds, and over the curriculum and instruction, which define the
academic content of a college education. We conclude with guidance for faculty who seek to be
equity advocates. The practical implications of this study can also inform the design of faculty
professional development.
Table 2.1.

Contributions of Boundary Crossing and Boundary Objects to Faculty Agency

Selected
recommendations for
faculty agency
Strengthen
recommendation with
concept of boundary
crossing
Strengthen
recommendation with
concept of boundary
object
Campbell and
O’Meara (2011)
Future research
should consider
whether the
departmental contexts
that facilitate agency
in career differ for
women, faculty of
color, and LGBTQ
faculty, and faculty at
Boundary crossing
contributes to these
recommendations by
conceptualizing
faculty agency as a
form of learning that
happens when
professors must
reconsider their
Boundary object
contributes to these
recommendations by
emphasizing how
artifacts help
professors create
communication about
racial equity between
administrative
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 39

different career stages
and disciplines.

Future research
should take into
consideration
individual differences
within departmental
contexts.
knowledge and
practices when
moving across
contexts. Instead of
focusing on the
contextual factors
that enable agency,
boundary crossing
highlights how
professors’
interactions and
transitions across
different sites are
opportunities to enact
agency.
leadership and
academic disciplines.
Gonzales (2014) Future research
should consider if
and how the type of
agency shapes
organizational
structures.

Future research
should consider how
personal histories
converge with
gender,
race/ethnicity, and
other characteristics.
Boundary crossing
contributes to these
recommendations by
focusing on the
various ways faculty
learn to enact their
agency to change
practices and
policies. As boundary
spanners, professors
rely on their personal
and professional
experiences to reflect
on and identify how
to coordinate
differences and
transform practices.
Although boundary
objects mediate
faculty agency, how
professors use
boundary objects to
make structural
changes depends on
their social and
professional
identities.

O’Meara (2015) Future research
should compare the
experiences of faculty
taking agency to
those who are stuck
and unable to assume
agency at particular
points in their
careers.

Future research
should look into
differences among
subgroups of women
Boundary crossing
contributes to these
recommendations by
focusing on how
faculty with different
professional identities
(e.g., disciplinary
training, professional
appointment) move
between different
worlds. This includes
behaviors that may
seem to reproduce
structures.
Boundary object
contributes to these
recommendations by
identifying the
boundary objects that
faculty with
organizationally
perceived low status
identities (e.g.,
women, racially
minoritized, pre-
tenured) use to enact
their agency.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 40

and subgroups of
faculty of color.
Sulé (2014) The study’s
implications outline
how faculty with
minoritized identities
create a new model
for succeeding in the
academy by
replicating aspects of
their institutions that
accrued rewards and
challenged those that
disaffirmed them.
Boundary crossing
contributes to the
finding by
conceptualizing
negotiating different
worlds as forms of
boundary crossing to
create
communication
between various
academic spaces.
Boundary objects
contribute to this
finding by
highlighting the
various ways
boundary objects
mediate the
challenges faculty
encounter because of
their minoritized
identities.

Literature Review: Faculty Agency
Battilana (2006) argued that individual’s social position influences their perceptions of
the context that shapes their stance in the (re)distribution of power and resources. Similarly,
faculty agency is domain specific, and professors exert higher levels of agency in some areas of
their academic lives than in others (Campbell & O’Meara, 2014). At the individual level,
professors’ past experiences, current situations, and future circumstances influence their
perceptions about their ability to advance their academic careers (Gonzales, 2018; O’Meara,
2015; Sulé, 2014). For example, Gonzales (2014) found that faculty who received their doctoral
training at research one universities were more likely to emphasize research at the expense of
teaching to support their institution’s striving efforts. Organizational factors that enable faculty
agency include faculty perceptions of fitting in their department, positive work-life climate, and
professional development resources (Campbell & O’Meara, 2014). Faculty who believe they
have institutional and departmental support for their intellectual and professional growth report
higher agency to achieve career goals (O’Meara, Rivera, Kuavea, & Corrigan, 2017). Societal
factors such as the political economy in higher education (e.g., academic capitalism; Levin &
Aliyeva, 2015; Slaughter & Leslie, 1997) also shape faculty agency.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 41

Critical race theorists argue that in addition to advancing their careers, racially
minoritized professors enact their agency to navigate and survive oppressive environments
(Delgado-Bernal, Burciaga, & Carmona, 2012; Ford, 2011; Gonzales, 2018; Griffin, Pifer,
Humprhey, & Hazelwood, 2011; Martinez, Chang, & Welton, 2017; Sulé, 2014). Critical race
feminist have contested that the social location of racially minoritized faculty, primarily women,
is located within the boundaries of different worlds (Collins, 2015; Sulé, 2014). As faculty,
racially minoritized individuals have an insider status in academia, but the intersectionality of
their minoritized identities (e.g., race, gender, sexuality) places them as outsiders within the
professoriate. Since faculty draw on their context and social location, the agency of racially
minoritized professors is informed by their experiences with racism and their knowledge
regarding the norms of academia (Gonzales, 2014; 2018; Sulé, 2014). For example, racially
minoritized professors can enact their agency to replicate norms of the professoriate that accrue
rewards (e.g., publishing in top-tier journals) and to challenge aspects of the profession that
disaffirm their social identities (Ford, 2011; Gonzales, 2018; Griffin et al., 2011; Sulé, 2014).
Professors who enact their agency to advance racial equity often have professional and
personal experiences with marginalization and discrimination (Baez, 2000; Gonzales, 2014;
Griffin et al., 2011; Martinez et al., 2017; Sulé, 2014). In this study, the majority of faculty had
at least one aspect of their identity marginalized (e.g., race, gender, sexuality), which might
explain their initial interest in addressing racial equity. Researchers have primarily applied
faculty agency to examine career advancement and resistance to oppressive environments. This
study conceptually frames faculty agency for racial equity through the lens of boundary crossing
and boundary objects. In this study, faculty are located within the boundaries where racial equity,
academic disciplines, and program offices intersect. How professors enact their agency depends
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 42

on the interplay between their social location within the context of program offices and
disciplinary departments. For example, a Latina tenured professor in a male-dominated field
might experience and respond to resistance differently than a Latina pre-tenured professor in a
similar field. However, each of the Latina’s experiences will vary on how they make sense of
their context. The choices faculty may perceive to be available to advance racial equity in student
advising might be different from those available to advance racial equity in faculty governance.
For these reasons, boundary crossing and boundary objects is a conceptual framework that
advances the literature on faculty agency by highlighting how professors interact with their
context to learn how to advance racial equity in multiple areas of faculty life.
Conceptual Framework: Boundary Crossing for Racial Equity
The boundaries of academia reproduce inequities by creating grounds of exclusion based
on social and professional identities. Faculty whose work looks different from traditional forms
of knowledge, such as racially minoritized professors who use interdisciplinary approaches, who
rely on multiple lines of inquiry (Gonzales, 2018), who position their subjectivities, and who
prioritize practice in their intellectual work (Baez, 2000; Gonzales, 2018), is undervalued by
their white male colleagues in decision-making and tenure and promotion (Ford, 2011; Turner,
González, & Wood, 2008). From this perspective, racial equity—which focuses on changing
practices and policies that create inequities in student outcomes by race—is a form of faculty
work that does not align with disciplinary canons. Boundary crossing is a process during which
professionals become aware of different ways of knowing that are common in other areas;
consequently, boundary spanners can expand their knowledge and practice (Akkerman &
Bakker, 2011). In this study, boundary crossing was applied to understand how faculty who
participated in inquiry-based interventions learn to broker knowledge, strategies, and tools about
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 43

racial equity to other members of their campus. An assumption in this study is that faculty can
act as agents within and against the cultural and structural pressures in higher education
institutions. The concepts of boundary crossing and boundary objects examine the tensions
faculty experience as they move between different worlds to advance racial equity.
Boundary theorists identified how individuals and objects could be in the boundaries of
different worlds. First, boundary spanners are individuals who hold positions that enable them to
interact with separate and disparate social groups (Akkerman & Bruining, 2016). For example,
administrative staff with insight into student life and faculty thinking can help faculty see how to
more effectively serve Black students (Posselt, Reyes, Slay, Kamimura, & Porter, 2017). Second,
boundary objects are material and symbolic artifacts that structure and activate processes of
communication among different professionals (Star, 2010). For instance, tenure and promotion
guidelines serve as criteria to evaluate the academic progression of professors from different
disciplines.
The Equity Scorecard was an intervention with language and tools designed as a
boundary crossing strategy to help faculty close racial equity gaps. Team leaders in this study
received specialized training for their leadership roles on the team, especially as they are called
on to guide others in the use of equity discourse and inquiry protocols. In collaboration with
senior administrators, team leaders used an Equity Scorecard template to select administrators,
faculty, and staff with demonstrated leadership attributes and interest in improving student
outcomes to be on the Equity Scorecard team (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012). Leaders of
governance committees were prioritized because they were viewed as well-situated boundary
spanners with the potential to spread what they would learn about racial equity to others in
subunits through their governance roles (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012). In these ways, the
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 44

construction of the Equity Scorecard team member role was very active and intentional as an
induction point for faculty to develop the role of an equity agent.
Professors work in different settings across loosely coupled subunits that operate under
their rules and norms (Kezar, 2014). Faulty who do equity work may, therefore, operate under
rules and norms that might not align with other areas of their professional responsibilities.
Faculty may use their knowledge about the inner workings of university life to communicate the
significance of racial equity to departments and program offices. At the same time, faculty—
particularly tenured faculty—have a sense of autonomy and self-governance in research,
teaching, and service. This independence enables faculty to work with minimal oversight from
senior administrators. For this reason, professors doing equity work are in unique positions to
introduce new language, knowledge, and tools that can disturb routines and norms, legitimate
equity work, and shape their colleagues’ thoughts and behaviors regarding racial equity
(Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Engeström, 2008). This same independence can also lead faculty to
underestimate the degree of continuous joint work needed to enact coordinated change across
multiple aspects of campus life (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011), particularly for racial equity.
Learning at the Boundaries
Akkerman and Bakker (2011) identified four learning mechanisms that outlined the
different ways professionals cross boundaries. First, individuals who learn by comparing
boundaries tend to highlight those differences (e.g., “othering”) or emphasize similarities (e.g.,
“legitimate coexistence”) which is a process of identification. Whether through comparison or
contrast, this process of identification serves to strengthen self-awareness of existing or new
identities. Individuals who learn through identification reconstruct their identities considering
new information without overcoming boundaries. In contrast, others learn through reflection by
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 45

taking into consideration other peoples’ perspectives (e.g., “perspective taking”) and then
expanding their current practices and identities. When they reflect on perspective-taking
experiences and make their understanding of new information, practices, and identities explicit
(e.g., “perspective making”), they expand the repertoire of identities available to others who have
similar roles. Learners who go through this form of learning draw on multiple perspectives and
practices in their decision-making.
Recognizing that the effort involved in overcoming boundaries is sometimes inefficient,
individuals rely on boundary objects to establish communication and collaboration while
minimizing confusion and confrontation, which is known as coordination (Akkerman & Bakker,
2011). Boundary objects are objects that increase boundary permeability. Individuals who learn
through coordination gain expertise in using boundary objects (e.g., course syllabi create
communication between instructor and students; between instructors; and between students) and
to translate specialized information and knowledge. Using boundary objects allows individuals to
introduce a routine (e.g., routinization) without incurring the social and time costs involved in
negotiating deliberate choices among those with different practices and values.
Although valuable for learning, coordination is rarely transformational. In contrast,
Engeström (2008) suggests that confrontations, conflicts, and disturbances are necessary for true
transformational learning. Transformational learning requires ongoing dialogue and joint-work
where individuals continuously question their motivations, values, and practices. Such
questioning allows new practices and procedures that embody what was learned to emerge
(Akkerman & Bakker, 2011). Through these four mechanisms, faculty agency for racial equity
can be characterized as a process to learn how to be race-conscious, race literate, and critical of
power structures in multiple contexts (e.g., academic admissions, classroom teaching, student
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 46

retention, and faculty-student advising) that have their own rules, knowledge, and tools. From a
boundary crossing and boundary objects perspective, the Equity Scorecard tools will help faculty
participants advance equity goals in different academic settings.
Methodology
This study was part of a larger project on the use of data to promote organizational
learning on equity and effectiveness in retaining and graduating students. This initiative was
implemented in over a dozen public comprehensive universities within a single state system of
higher education and included the Equity Scorecard. For the broader project, five campuses were
purposefully sampled using three criteria: quality of data use (high, medium, low); type of
knowledge production (actionable knowledge, knowledge, information; for distinctions, see
Marsh, 2012); and institutional leadership (stable versus leadership turnover). The five campuses
include three with high levels of data use and knowledge production, one with medium levels of
data use and knowledge production, and one with medium levels of data use and low levels of
knowledge production. Three of the five universities had experienced executive leadership
turnover during Equity Scorecard implementation and one experienced leadership change after
the Equity Scorecard concluded. To protect participant confidentiality, we opted to describe the
context of the universities as part of the larger state-system of public universities. Most of the
campuses were classified as public, four-year “primarily baccalaureate” institutions (IPEDS,
2013-2014). All campuses were predominantly white institutions. White student enrollment
ranged from 78 to 87%. Black students averaged 8% of total enrollments. Latinx student
enrollment averaged 4.2%, while Native and American Indian students were a very small
proportion of total enrollments (less than 2%). In addition to declining enrollment of white
students, system-wide budget cuts depended on the enrollment and retention of students.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 47

Methods
The study’s data is comprised of semi-structured interviews each lasting about an hour.
Our interpretations of the interview data were supplemented by observation of three Equity
Scorecard team meetings (at three of the five campuses), of informal interactions among team
members and leaders (e.g., in hallway conversations between interviews on campus), and by
knowledge of the Equity Scorecard action research design. As part of the larger project, the team
conducted 53 interviews using a semi-structured interview protocol with faculty, administrators,
and staff to learn about their participation in the managed-change initiative, and the Equity
Scorecard in particular. The protocol addressed three broad topics: (a) involvement in the
initiative, (b) learning about data use and equity, and (c) outcomes of the initiative. Specifically,
participants were asked about the actions taken to enact the Equity Scorecard teams’
recommendations in addressing the equity gaps in student outcomes, the mechanisms of and their
participation in the change process, the use of networks and resources for change, and the factors
that influenced change at their respective campus (see Appendix A and Appendix B for interview
protocols).
Sample. For this study, we focused on interviews with 12 professors that had been
audiotaped and transcribed. This omitted five professors from the study sample, two of whom
had not been part of the Equity Scorecard team process and three who declined to be audio
recorded. Three professors were interviewed twice, resulting in the data set for this study of 15
interview transcripts from 12 faculty. As seen in Table 2.2., six participants were women; seven
were White (Drs. Andrew Swenson, Brian Landon, Julie Bryant, Liz Michaels, Stephanie Ayers,
Susan Haught, and Theresa Sample), four were Black (Drs. James Maddox, Mason Woods,
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 48

Owen Walker, and Renee Springer) and one was Latinx (Dr. Miguel Rios). All faculty were
tenured, half at the rank of associate and half full professors.
Table 2.2.

Faculty Background Characteristics

Pseudonym Campus Race Gender Rank Team Role Discipline
Brian Landon Drakesford
University
White Male Associate Member STEM
Miguel Rios Drakesford
University
Latinx Male Full Member Professional
Studies
Renee Springer Valley
University
Black Female Associate Member Professional
Studies
Mason Woods Valley
University
Black Male Assistant Member STEM
James Maddox Hillside
University
Black Male Full Member Social
Sciences
Susan Haught Olympia
University
White Female Full Leader STEM
Julie Bryant Olympia
University
White Female Associate Member Humanities
Liz Michaels Old Main
University
White Female Full Leader Social
Sciences
Owen Walker Old Main
University
Black Male Full Member Social
Sciences
Andrew Swenson Old Main
University
White Male Associate Member Humanities
Theresa Sample Old Main
University
White Female Associate Member Professional
Studies
Stephanie Ayers Old Main
University
White Female Associate Member Humanities

Research on the Equity Scorecard identified how setting clear goals by race, routinely
using data disaggregated by race (Felix et al., 2015), and having leaders with the knowledge and
practices to communicate the significance of racial equity (Dowd & Liera, 2018) create the
organizational conditions for change. In this study, faculty received inquiry protocols for data
use and data presentation (e.g., benchmarking tools, data disaggregated by race); new language
(e.g., equity gaps, equity-mindedness) for discussing race-based inequities and institutional
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 49

responsibility for student success; communication templates; action planning protocols; and
procedures for teamwork and distributed leadership. The Equity Scorecard activities set the
groundwork for faculty participants to take actions within the team and campus-wide. Drs.
Haught and Michaels were team leaders who had prior experience as leaders in administrative or
governance roles. Five participants had governance or administrative leadership roles that led to
or resulted from their participation on the Equity Scorecard team.
Analytical Process
Souto-Manning (2014) emphasizes that narrative analysis informs understanding of “how
people make sense of their experiences in society through language” (p. 161) because identities
are constructed through narrative and “identity in talk” is “fluid ” (p.170). A narrative approach
helped us examine the sequence of events in the Equity Scorecard process, as well as the
professional role in advancing racial equity, as presented by participants. Understanding how
they perceived their agency within the Equity Scorecard team provided insight into their role
within the larger institutional setting. Moreover, by obtaining narratives of what happened, who
was involved, and how participants reacted to those encounters, we unpacked the sequence of
past events and anticipated future actions through the experiences that stood out in their
recollections.
Analysis. We conducted three phases of analysis in this study and used Atlas.ti 7.5.12 for
the ongoing composition of memos, coding, and analysis. The first step was to understand the
larger narrative within each interview by breaking it down into component parts and seeing how
they relate to each other (Polkinghorne, 1995). We read and listened to each transcript to identify
passages that we perceived as the beginning, middle, and ending of stories conveyed in the larger
narrative. In the second phase, we identified the plots in each interview transcript that spoke to
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 50

events and actions associated with faculty agency to advance racial equity (Polkinghorne, 1995).
We used Dauite’s (2014) plot analysis technique to organize data into plots with initiating
actions, complicating actions, high points, resolution strategies, codas, and endings. We
identified 7 to 28 plots for each faculty participant, for a total of 163 plots across all interview
transcripts (see Appendix C for plot example).
Table 2.3.

Boundary Crossing Coding Scheme

Learning mechanisms

Identification Faculty who discussed having become aware of the significance of
racial equity work and how it differs from or legitimizes their current
practices
Reflection Faculty who expressed an understanding of the political context and
using that information to make decisions.
Coordination Faculty used tools and language from disciplinary departments,
program offices, or university initiatives with those from the Equity
Scorecard to advance racial equity.
Transformation Faculty shared experiences with being motivated to address issues of
racial equity in their departments and practices by using Equity
Scorecard tools and language to make practical changes.

Plot analysis helped us understand how each participant interacted with Equity Scorecard
materials, team members, other colleagues, and their institutional context to advance racial
equity in different settings. In the final phase, we used Akkerman’s and Bakker’s (2011) four
learning mechanisms to interpret each plot on faculty agency, both within and outside the Equity
Scorecard, as a form of boundary crossing. The conceptual lens of boundary crossing was
developed deductively (from the literature review) and inductively through the analysis process.
For example, we used the literature to define faculty agency as learning mechanisms (see Table
2.3.) which was then used to interpret faculty agency in each plot as a learning mechanism (see
Table 2.4.). We then identified similarities and differences across the different interview
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 51

transcripts to produce findings that illustrate the ways faculty enacted their agency to overcome
challenges of racial equity across university silos.
Table 2.4.

Sample Matrix used for Analysis

Identification Interpretation
Dr. Andrew Swenson A [team leader] called me and asked
me if I would do this and I had just
been promoted to full professor and I
said “I’m having a hangover from
two years of saying yes to everything
and I’m going to say no to this
project.” Then she explained what
the focus was and I was so clear
that it was one of my highest
values at the university to support
this kind of work and then she
described who the team was to me
and it was a team of people that I
was thrilled to work with and so I
was convinced that despite the fact
that I already had way too much
to do that I was going to be part of
this.
Dr. Swenson’s perspective
about taking on additional
responsibilities after being
promoted to full professor
changed. Initially, Dr.
Swenson informed the team
leader who was recruiting
him that even though racial
equity was one of his highest
values he was going to have
to say no because he was
“having a hangover from two
years of saying yes.” When
he learned about who was
going to be on the team, he
changed his perception by
identifying racial equity work
with being a “thrilled” to
work on despite that he had
too much work.
Dr. Renee Springer The data was from the University
Data office, I think it was numbers,
but the numbers were if 500 [Black
students] were admitted by
graduation there only were a quarter
left of the 500 and progressively
from the end of first year, second
year, they just left. The numbers
have broken down into 300 – I mean
about 40 a year and the numbers
fluctuate that way. So to me seeing
that – I think for me it was more
of a moral issue because I felt like
the university is not taking
responsibility for what we are
doing. We are going out there and
saying all this, come to our school,
and the students come with all the
Dr. Springer knew that her
university had problems with
retaining Black students from
her personal interactions.
When she learned about the
specificity of the numbers
from analyzing institutional
data she felt that it was a
moral issue for the university
to change its recruiting and
retention practices. The data
disaggregated by race
confirmed Dr. Springer’s
understanding of racial
inequity in student retention
while moving her to hold the
university accountable for
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 52

hope and they pay money and it’s
just like a trap… there is evidence
but we are not going there. So I
just felt it was a moral issue
their practices that create
such injustices.

Positionality. As a male Latinx graduate student researcher and a White female
professor, we benefited from the opportunity to compare our different perspectives based on our
racial, ethnic, gender, and professional status differences. For example, the male Latinx graduate
student called on the White professor to reexamine her analysis of data collected to consider
whether her personal and professional identification with a White female respondent led her to
overlook contradictions in the participant’s words and actions. Additionally, the Latinx male
graduate student’s racial identity shaped his interpretation of the role of racially minoritized
professors’ experiences with racism in their involvement with their university’s racial equity
efforts. The author’s different social and professional identities played a role in how the data was
interpreted and the findings were presented.
Limitations
The decision to use a sociocultural theoretical lens highlighted how faculty interacted
with colleagues, tools, and sociocultural processes to enact their agency for racial equity. Power
dynamics and emotional aspects of racial equity work are socially constructed and racialized.
These topics are addressed in other related analyses, but they are not addressed here, where the
focus is on the professional learning and development of individual professors. A second
limitation of this study is the reliance on the experiences of faculty to examine boundary
crossing, and did not include the perspectives of student affairs officials, deans, and other
administrators who were referenced in the data. With additional observational data, the study
could have been better positioned to contextualize faculty perceptions of behaviors (their own
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 53

and others’). However, the data did include faculty who were part of the same Equity Scorecard
team, which helped triangulate recounted events and perceptions.
Findings
We organized the findings to illustrate faculty agency within and outside the boundaries
of the Equity Scorecard. We start by describing how the Equity Scorecard’s focus on race talk
created opportunities for faculty to identify differences and similarities between racial equity
work and traditional forms of faculty work. Then, we outline how professors reflected on and
took into consideration the boundaries separating disciplinary departments and program offices
from the Equity Scorecard to determine how to communicate the significance of racial equity
campus-wide. We conclude the findings by highlighting professors transformed boundaries
outside the Equity Scorecard.
Faculty Agency for Racial Equity within the Boundaries of the Equity Scorecard
The structure of the Equity Scorecard learning activities, which focused on data use to
identify equity gaps, provided faculty with opportunities to define the ways the Equity Scorecard
was different from the boundaries of disciplinary departments and program offices in regards to
racial equity work. When asked how he felt as an African-American during a discussion of data
showing equity gaps facing Black students, Dr. Owen Walker emphasized the Equity
Scorecard’s “very open dialogue” and “ground rules” to ensure that “what we talked about in the
meetings stayed in the meetings.” He believed that the Equity Scorecard’s open dialogue and
ground rules were important because team members “were reflective of different units, so we
were able to speak freely about what we thought.” Dr. Andrew Swenson, a white male tenured
professor, recalled feeling excited to be able to work with “a bunch of smart people sitting
around the room with a bunch of shared values.” Dr. Swenson defined the boundaries of the
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 54

Equity Scorecard by distinguishing Equity Scorecard team members who he believed “[racial
equity work] was a new kind of way of thinking or talking about race” from those “[who] were
ready for it and we were all in.” Faculty who were ready to advance racial equity from a critical
perspective, Dr. Swenson believed, helped “create an ethos in the room” because there was “a lot
of trust where people are doing their best to think from a position that is beyond their subject
position according to race and gender.”
In addition to being able to move “beyond their subject position,” Dr. Renee Springer, a
Black female tenured professor, highlighted that racial equity work required an “understanding
that we were not talking about students and their problems and their weaknesses,” instead, “what
is the institution not (emphasis) doing?” For Dr. Springer, her level of comfort to talk about race
depended whether team members “are genuine and they mean what they say,” because she was
“the passionate, emotional, do it yesterday, what’s so hard about that. Why are you struggling
with this thing?” Similar to Dr. Springer, Dr. Susan Reynolds, a white female tenured professor,
differentiated her faculty colleagues’ perspectives that if “you treat all of your students the same
that is equity” from the Equity Scorecard’s approach because “they are not thinking [that] people
are different and they have different needs.” The experience of engaging in race talk in a
professional setting—the ability to “talk freely”—apparently countered the norms of dialogue
about race outside the setting of team meetings. Dr. Walker’s comment that what team members’
“talked about in the meetings stayed in the meetings” suggests that the team’s rules differed from
other settings. For these faculty, the team setting functioned as a boundary object where issues
and ideas from multiple settings (“different units”) could be discussed meaningfully “for the
greater good” among diverse participants.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 55

Faculty also defined the boundaries of the Equity Scorecard to include a willingness and
awareness to focus on the structural reasons for the existence of racial inequities in student
outcomes. The majority of professors, such as Drs. Theresa Sample, Andrew Swenson, and
Mason Woods, (re)defined the Equity Scorecard’s boundary by sharing how their use of data
helped them become aware of structures on campus. Racial equity work, according to Dr.
Swenson, required professors to take “a 30,000-foot view about the functioning of the
university.” He further elaborated that “for an ordinary faculty member to be able to see the
functioning of the university from that point of view [was] invaluable.” Dr. Mason Woods, a
Black male tenured professor, identified the Equity Scorecard’s focus on data use as giving him
access to information that “a lot of us, especially in faculty, did not know. We did not know what
the hierarchy was. We did not know who made the decisions in admissions.”
In contrast to using the boundaries of the Equity Scorecard to distinguish racial equity
work from other forms of faculty work, Drs. James Maddox, a Black male tenured professor,
Miguel Rios, a Latino tenured professor, and Renee Springer relied on their research to question
the Equity Scorecard’s practices. Dr. Maddox used his identity “as a [researcher] who studies
about race” to emphasize that race “is such a complex situation [and] that is why I think the
numbers (e.g., data disaggregated by race) all make me skeptic[al] because there’s just so much
that plays into this and we don’t know other factors.” He further explained that “your skin tone
does not determine your scholastic ability because that’s the only difference that exists is your
skin tone.” Dr. Maddox emphasized that “the treatment that you receive because of your skin
tone, the education you receive because of your skin tone, the career opportunities your parents
have available because of their skin tone” were the “real factors that we need to be looking at.”
The lack of additional variables to study racial equity frustrated Dr. Maddox because it leads to
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 56

some of his team members to believe that “the way to address [racism] is very simple, we just
need to sit down, have a conversation and talk about common ground and get to know each
other.”
Dr. Maddox’s comments show how the intersecting boundaries of racial equity work and
faculty work can legitimately coexist (e.g., critical about the relationship between race and
power) while distinguishing differences between the two worlds (e.g., not all faculty are
critically conscious). Although Dr. Maddox questioned the team’s reliance on data to make
recommendations, he distanced himself because the Equity Scorecard’s approach did not align
with his understanding of racism. Similar to Dr. Maddox, Dr. Rios described himself as a
“system theorist” who focused on the relationship between “inputs” and “outputs” to critique his
university’s lack of leadership to focus on systemic issues. When talking about institutional
racism, Dr. Rios said that “I don’t think the institution really looks at how their policy impacts
certain groups.” Drs. Maddox’s and Rios’ comments illustrate the ways professors use their
research to cross boundaries.
In addition to finding similarities and differences between faculty research and racial
equity work, Drs. Springer and Liz Michaels believed that relying on data runs the risk of
dehumanizing racial equity work. For example, Dr. Springer relied on her personal experiences
to understand “the pain of coming to college and not being successful. To me that’s painful I
have children in college, and it’s just a painful experience to think that your child is going to
drop-out.” The data disaggregated by race confirmed Dr. Renee Springer’s intuition of her
university’s inability to retain Black students. When Dr. Springer saw the “numbers were if 500
[Black students] were admitted by graduation there [were] only a quarter left.” She believed that
by “the end of [the] first year [and] second year” Black students leave the university. Ultimately,
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 57

Dr. Springer believed that low retention rates of Black students were a “moral issue because the
university is not taking responsibility…we are going out there and saying come to our school,
and the students come with all the hope, and they pay money, and it’s just like a trap.” Dr.
Michaels also believed that focusing on data came with a “tendency to get caught up in the
numbers…and forget about all the social and emotional components attributing to academic
success on campus.” Professors used the Equity Scorecard’s practices and language to define
racial equity work as a process requiring faculty to move beyond one’s subject position and
become responsible for changing structures. A few faculty relied on their professional and
personal experiences to question the Equity Scorecard’s focus on data use as removing the
complexity and humanity involved in racial equity work. All professors considered the Equity
Scorecard’s boundary to inform their perspectives and behaviors to advance racial equity
campus-wide, which is the outlined in the next section.
Advancing Racial Equity across University Silos
Faculty worked in environments where system-wide budget cuts created challenges to
promote racial equity. Administrative staff and faculty colleagues were wary about the intentions
of Equity Scorecard team members collecting data on recruiting and retention practices. Most
professors found success because they reflected on the boundaries between racial equity work
within the Equity Scorecard, and the practices, language, and politics across the university’s
silos. Drs. Stephanie Ayers, white female tenured professor, Miguel Rios, and Mason Woods
described how the state university-wide budget cuts created “paranoia on campus” about the role
of Equity Scorecard team members collecting data on admission and retention practices.
Learning about boundaries helped faculty expand their perspectives to consider the
resistance they will encounter from faculty colleagues and administrative staff. Dr. Walker said
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 58

that his university has “so many different units” that were not “used to working across.” He
believed that as an academic, administrative staff in the admissions office would say “okay who
are these people [Equity Scorecard team members]…[and why] are they on our turf.” As part of
the Equity Scorecard team, team leaders paired team members, including faculty and staff, and
assigned each pair to collect data from a disciplinary department or program office. For example,
Dr. Walker felt “it was really effective…working with [Dr. Sample because] you did not feel like
you were out on your own.” Dr. Michaels, who was the team leader on Dr. Walker’s Equity
Scorecard team, recalled the team “had to work really hard to develop working relationships with
admissions, so they did not feel that we were causing trouble.” “Making relationships, old-
fashioned, pick-up the phone, have a cup of coffee, sit and talk with people about things that
matter” was an effective strategy to overcome boundaries with minimal confrontation, according
to Dr. Ayers. The pairing of team members and their efforts to build relationships with program
offices helped professors “develop[ed] some credibility both within our committee and in the
university [which] propelled,” Dr. Michaels’ team to move “forward in a way other committees
just didn’t have the clout.”
Not all faculty were able to develop such relationships actively, however. Drs. Bryant and
Haught, who were on the same Equity Scorecard team, used a survey to collect information
about retention practices. Dr. Haught said her Equity Scorecard team emailed a survey to
department chairs with questions such as “What do you do? Do you have anything that you do
for retention and completion to help kids succeed and make it through?” According to Dr.
Bryant, “the unfortunate thing is that the survey was not worded as well as it could be. It was
both a little confusing for department chairs, and also some department chairs took offense.” Drs.
Bryant and Haugh leveraged their status and relationships as faculty to personally communicate
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 59

with department deans and chairs to compensate for the miscommunication. Dr. Haught
described how she argued for the team’s credibility when her department chair asked her
“[Susan], what is this?...Aren’t you on this committee?” To which she responded “don’t be afraid
of this. [The Equity Scorecard team] is a nice group.” The social differences between different
areas of practice became evident to them in ways they had not expected, enabling learning to
occur. In this instance, the Equity Scorecard inquiry tool did not serve as a boundary object
because the survey recipients did not know enough about the purpose of the survey or the Equity
Scorecard team.
However, not all professors were in a position to invest time to create relationships with
faculty colleagues and administrative staff. In these instances, faculty used data disaggregated by
race and language as boundary objects to increase boundary permeability across silos. Drs.
Mason and Swenson focused on using language to minimize any apprehension administrative
staff, and faculty colleagues may have about supporting the team’s racial equity efforts. Dr.
Swenson informed his colleagues “that if you are worried about structural inequality this kind of
data analysis gets to structures in a way that transcends the individual.” Other professors, such as
Dr. Bryant, believed that data disaggregated by race “enabled us to use it and then go to different
parts of the university and say, “There’s this gap we’re going to try and figure out why.”
Throughout their efforts, faculty took into consideration the perspectives of their colleagues in
disciplinary departments and program offices to draw on multiple perspectives and practices in
their boundary crossing.
Learning through reflection and coordination went hand-in-hand. Professors believed
that the placement of equity goals alongside governance committee work would enable broader
campus support for equity work. Dr. Rios said since “it’s all about the numbers because those
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 60

numbers [equity gaps] are converted into dollars if [the administration] had numbers then [they]
can give the dollars, but if [administrators] don’t have the numbers then [they] don’t give the
dollars.” Several participants reflected on how budget cuts determined the recommendations
administrators, professors, and staff would contemplate as legitimate ideas for consideration.
Professors who made explicit their knowledge about the political climate also used data
disaggregated by race to incorporate equity into governance functions (e.g., performance-based
metrics, strategic plans, and departmental five-year plans) for others to encounter in their
everyday practices. For instance, Dr. Brian Landon, who was the chair of the Strategic Planning
Committee, shared how as a team “we linked [equity goals] to the strategic plan” since they were
“familiar with the need to link initiatives to both the strategic plan and to things like
performance-based funding.” His intention was for the Strategic Planning Committee to require
departments to use data disaggregated by race to track recruitment and retention numbers.
However, perspective making did not necessarily entail explicit communication of a change. Dr.
Swenson, who like Dr. Landon was also on the Strategic Planning Committee, described how he
“sneaked into the strategic plan that [each department] would take the Equity Scorecard
recommendations.” Faculty actions to “link” and “sneak” racial equity goals into institutional
and departmental plans exemplify the boundary work required of professors to translate racial
equity goals into local practices.
The ability to reflect on economic and political factors affecting administrative decision-
making emerged in these results as a characteristic of faculty agency to advance racial equity at
the policy level. Reflection as a learning mechanism allowed faculty to temporarily use data
disaggregated by race to create lines of communication between team members and non-team
members, even in the absence of consensus about the importance of racial equity. For some
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 61

participants, these data served as a tool to (re)define racial inequity as a structural problem, while
others used the data to identify areas where administrators could reallocate funding. The different
uses and interpretations of the Equity Scorecard data and data tools maintained collaboration
without the need to become confrontational about the purpose of identifying and acting on equity
gaps. In the final section, we highlight how faculty used their knowledge on racial equity to
transform practices.
Transforming Boundaries outside the Equity Scorecard
The Equity Scorecard created a coordinated process that allowed team members and
practitioners to collaborate with minimal effort and interferences to their everyday practices.
Although faculty participants expressed experiencing tensions in their roles at the start of the
change process, overtime their involvement in the Equity Scorecard allowed them to make
changes using new tools and language with minor role conflicts outside the Equity Scorecard
meetings. Drs. Michaels, Sample, Walker, and Woods shared stories about taking actions to
(re)create the Equity Scorecard’s problem space in their departments. These faculty attempted to
merge their advising roles with equity-minded practices.
Dr. Sample worked with students who were undeclared majors. Before joining the Equity
Scorecard team, Dr. Sample “started to asking about [disagregated data] about gender, race,
[and] ethnicity,” but was told “oh we don’t give that out because we’re concerned that you’ll act
on it in a negative way.” Being on the Equity Scorecard team provided Dr. Sample with an
opportunity to meet and work with the institutional researcher. Her relationship with the
institutional researcher gave her access to data disaggregated by race for students with
undeclared majors. Dr. Sample learned “that there is really very little difference between
students of color and the majority students in GPA related to their change of major.”
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 62

Problematically, however, “students of color are either making the decision about where they
want to go later. Thus, they’ve taken more credits, or they are having to repeat classes.” This
information guided Dr. Sample’s conversations with racially minoritized students about whether
“they checked with financial aid…because that’s going to have an impact on credits for
graduation, retaking [courses], and time to degree [completion].”
Similarly, Dr. Woods shared how his department has taken efforts to change “the
language that we use when we create our syllabi,” and “the whole idea of everything is merit-
based.” For example, Dr. Woods facilitated conversations in his department about perceptions
and indicators of merit. He pointed out to his colleagues that “maybe it’s not about merit and
maybe it’s not we just take the top tier students on as our research assistants, but think about how
research experience could help [racially minoritized] students.” He also “did a quick analysis of
the students who [participate] in student-faculty research” and found that “almost all of the
students who do research with us are white, and a lot of them are male. Even though females are
65% of our major, and we have a substantial portion of students of color.” Ultimately, Dr.
Woods “did a whole equity component to our department for our five-year review” to require
faculty to “have discussions with students in class and try to minimize potential bias that we
discovered through student and teacher interviews.”
Dr. Michaels used data disaggregated by race to question equity gaps in gatekeeping
courses in her department. At Dr. Michaels’s campus, her team recommended that academic
departments prioritize projects designed to implement the Equity Scorecard’s recommendations.
Dr. Michaels capitalized on funding available from her dean for projects intended to close equity
gaps in retention. Dr. Michaels created a new departmental routine for faculty to use data
disaggregated by race to track equity gaps in gatekeeping courses and created new advising
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 63

practices designed to support Black students. For example, Dr. Michaels “looked at the pass/fail
rates in terms of the equity gap in some of our classes on campus in [my department].” What was
“most interesting to me is that even with an overall lousy pass rate there was a huge gap by
race…there was a sizable racial equity gap for both transfer and native students for the class.”
Dr. Michaels decided to recruit “10 students who had completed the class and done pretty well in
the class to do a field experience credit with me for the fall.” She intended to have the recruited
students “to provide regular peer support – study hall time for that class in particular so
[students] don’t have to sign up for tutoring.” During the member check interview, Dr. Michaels
described how she trained a junior faculty to take over her role as student advisor for the peer-to-
peer tutoring program that she had created and she secured a physical location in a renovated
classroom space for the tutoring center.
Dr. Landon was also concerned about the overpopulated gatekeeping courses in his
department. According to Dr. Landon, “in the large group setting, it’s hard to build a personal
relationship with a student. You just can’t…you can’t learn their names.” However, unlike Dr.
Michaels, Dr. Landon did not use boundary objects to create new routines to interact with
colleagues and students. Dr. Michaels created a new program that allowed her to continue her
advocacy for equity while advising students and collaborating with her colleagues. Dr. Michaels
actions are different from other forms of faculty work because she used data disaggregated by
race to inform her practices and make changes that directly changed how faculty in her
department will advise racially minoritized students.
Discussion
Our findings make important contributions to existing literature on faculty agency and
racial equity. First, the findings reveal that boundaries between racial equity, academic
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 64

disciplines, and program offices were permeable. However, for faculty to experience success in
crossing boundaries, they had to be aware of the political context to decide how to bridge the
different worlds. The findings highlight how professors’ social location informed the choices
they perceived they had to advance racial equity. Conceptualizing faculty agency for racial
equity as a dialectic interaction between social location and structure contributes to the literature
by illustrating how faculty simultaneously reproduced (e.g., sneaking equity goals), negotiated
(e.g., building relationships), and transformed (e.g., changing advising practices) structures. This
study’s findings contribute an understanding of how professors’ social location shape how they
interact with their context to advance racial equity. The literature describes how faculty who
participate in inquiry-based interventions learn to use data disaggregated by race to inform their
practices (Dowd & Bensimon, 2015; Felix et al., 2015). Furthermore, researchers outlined the
significance of supportive work environments for faculty to advance their careers (Campbell &
O’Meara, 2014).
In this study, we found that faculty used multiple learning mechanisms to advance racial
equity in different areas of campus. At the university level, faculty aligned equity goals with
economically and politically accepted practices. Faculty interacted with the campus culture to
learn that administrators were prioritizing goals and efforts that would economically benefit the
university. At the interpersonal level, faculty recognized the political tensions between
administration and program offices and disciplinary departments because of the lack of financial
resources. For this reason, faculty took additional efforts to create working relationships with
program offices by being transparent about their role as Equity Scorecard team members. When
faculty encountered resistance, they relied on their membership to the professoriate to
communicate the purpose and significance of racial equity in the everyday practices of
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 65

disciplinary departments. This finding highlights the role of personal and professional networks
to advance racial equity. Professional development training should have activities designed to
support faculty in developing the critical knowledge of the political and economic campus
culture. If administrators perceive faculty as playing critical roles to advance racial equity, then
faculty should create working relationships across campus.
Faculty experienced the most success of transformational change in their own
departments. This finding supports current literature on racial equity in higher education by
showing how faculty relied on data disaggregated by race to identify racial equity gaps and
propose recommendations to change student advising (Dowd & Bensimon, 2015; Felix et al.,
2015). The structured approach of the Equity Scorecard provided opportunities for faculty to
have conversations about racial equity. Through teamwork, faculty enacted their agency within
and outside the Equity Scorecard to transform student advising. However, we also found that
professors’ personal experiences with racism shaped how they made sense of the utility of data
disaggregated by race to address racial equity. These finding highlight how accepted approaches
of inquiry (e.g., data disaggregated by race) might not align with the perspectives and methods
racially minoritized professors use to address racial equity. Administrators interested in
implementing interventions to address racial equity should take into consideration the different
ways professors’ personal and professional experiences with racism inform how they make sense
of such interventions.
The findings also contribute to the conceptual understanding of faculty agency, primarily
to advance racial equity. The conceptual framework of boundary crossing and boundary objects
aligns with critical race feminists’ arguments of faculty being within the boundaries of different
worlds (Gonzales, 2018; Sulé, 2014). Instead of focusing on career advancement, the findings
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 66

outlined multiple strategies, both perspective and behavioral, faculty used to advance racial
equity in student outcomes. For example, identification and reflection described the different
ways faculty made sense and conceptually strategized to advance racial equity. Coordination and
transformation were mechanisms that outlined professors’ behaviors to implement practices and
policies to advance racial equity. However, faculty simultaneously moved between and at times
combined the learning mechanisms (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Akkerman & Bruining, 2016;
Schenke, Van Driel, Geijsel, & Volman, 2017). For example, faculty viewed equity goals
through the eyes of administrators (e.g., reflection as a learning mechanism) to identify choices
that will increase the implementation of racial equity recommendations. For this reason, faculty
embedded their equity recommendations into strategic plans and performance-based funding
metrics (e.g., coordination as a learning mechanism). However, the learning mechanisms of
reflection and coordination were most associated with reproducing and negotiating structures to
implement racial equity at the student level, which was illustrated by faculty using current
structures to implement racial equity goals. The learning mechanisms of identification and
transformation were more associated with transforming structures as illustrated by the changes in
having conversations about race and advising practices. Although faculty agency for racial
equity is a constant negotiation of successful and unsuccessful attempts at brokering change in
multiple places, having the political knowledge to establish working relationships provides
opportunities for faculty to identify multiple strategies to advance racial equity.
Concluding Remarks
Conceptualizing faculty agency from a boundary crossing and boundary object
perspective outlined the various ways professors made sense of their context to develop
strategies to advance racial equity. The majority of professors referenced data disaggregated by
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 67

race as a tool they used to determine where and how to advance racial equity on their campus
and department. For example, professors used data disaggregated by race to identify equity gaps
equity and propose recommendations to address such inequities. In this sense, faculty used
Equity Scorecard tools to inform their decisions about how to integrate equity goals into policies
of accountability (e.g., performance-based funding metrics). The application of the four learning
mechanisms revealed that Equity Scorecard tools did not completely mediate faculty agency.
Instead, faculty agency was enshrined in professors’ personal and professional experiences. Ten
out of the twelve faculty relied on their professional membership and working relationships to
coordinate differences about racial equity in both program offices and disciplinary departments.
However, two Black professors reflected on their experience with racism and how it informed
their approaches to racial equity.
In the next chapter, I further explore how professors’ experiences with racism shaped
their learning about racial equity and their agency to advance racial equity. As I outline, the
purpose of the next empirical study was to advance the findings presented in this chapter by
applying cultural historical activity theory to focus on how professors’ social location mediated
how they interrogated racial equity in their campus.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 68

Chapter 3: Faculty Agency to Advance Racial Equity in Faculty Hiring
Professors who serve as change agents for racial equity often engage in individual, rather
than collective, action (Dowd, Bishop, & Bensimon, 2015; Felix, Bensimon, Hanson, Gray, &
Klingsmith, 2015; Peña, 2012). Faculty in this study were involved in a ten-month intervention
and received administrative support to participate in collective action to promote racial equity
among the academic staff at a private religiously affiliated university in the state of California. In
2014, there were 11 Asian-American, 7 Latinx, and 4 Black tenure-track or tenured professors
employed at the university where this study takes place. The majority of racially minoritized
professors (34%) were in the social sciences while only 4% of them were in the natural sciences.
Instead of implementing best practices in faculty diversity, faculty in this study interrogated the
ways their campus culture excluded racially minoritized professors from the professoriate. In
doing so, they changed their recruitment strategies, job announcements, and evaluation (e.g.,
interview questions) and decision-making (e.g., can faculty candidates mentor Black and Latinx
students) criteria that discriminated and biased against hiring racially minoritized faculty
candidates. Their approach to faculty diversity proved to be successful because the first year
after changing their faculty hiring policy the university hired three Asian, two Black, and one
Latinx tenure-track professors. As I outline in the following sections, this study is different from
previous research on faculty diversity by focusing on faculty agency to interrupt discriminatory
patterns in faculty hiring with the intention to advance racial equity in the professoriate.
Previous research on faculty diversity has shared a variety of methods such as
strategically placing advertisements in targeted journals and list-serves (Gasman, Kim, &
Nguyen, 2011; Phillips, 2004), creating unique hire positions through postdoctoral fellowships,
hiring their doctoral candidates (Kelly, Gayles, & Williams, 2017; Phillips, 2004; Smith, Turner,
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 69

Osei-Kofi, & Richards, 2004), organizing racially minoritized faculty lecture series, relying on
personal networks (Gasman et al., 2011), using diversity descriptors in job announcements
(Smith et al., 2004), and employing cluster hires (Kelly et al., 2017; Muñoz et al., 2017). In their
review of the literature on racially minoritized faculty, Turner and colleagues (2008)
recommended college and university leaders institutionalize diversity goals; advocate for faculty
diversity; train staff, faculty, and administration on the specific issues racially minoritized faculty
face in the workplace; and align their campus diversity efforts with disciplinary departmental
diversity efforts.
Despite the implementation of best practices to hire racially minoritized professors, gaps
among historically marginalized and white professors continue to exist (Turner, Gonzales,
Wood, 2008). For context, in the fall of 2013, 78% of full-time college faculty in the US were
white, 6% were Black, 4% were Latinx, and less than 1% were Native American (U.S.
Department of Education, 2016). Researchers contend that diversifying the faculty requires the
interruption of standard procedures and mindsets that reproduce predominantly white faculty
bodies (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017; Smith et al., 2004); the mechanisms that inform faculty
judgment and decision-making (Fraser & Hunt, 2011; Sheridan, Fine, Pribbenow, Handelsman,
& Carnes, 2010; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017; Smith et al., 2004; Tuitt, Sagaria, & Turner, 2007;
Turner, 2002); and the sociocultural norms and rules that guide search committee members’
behaviors, cognitions, and emotions in decision-making (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017; Villalpando
& Delgado-Bernal, 2002; Ware, 2000).
This study is an example of how faculty can respond to national calls of increasing the
racial diversity and racial literacy among faculty (AERA, 2015; Kayes, 2006; Smith et al., 2004;
Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). The study’s findings contribute to the literature on faculty diversity
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 70

by examining the ways faculty interrogated their campus culture to advance racial equity in
faculty hiring. These professors drew on their experiences and critical knowledge about the way
their campus culture ascribed racially minoritized faculty candidates as underqualified and
unfitted for tenure-track positions. The following research questions guided this study:
1) How do professors change their faculty recruiting and hiring process to be more
equitable?
2) Given the opportunity to do so, in what ways do professors establish a sense of agency as
change agents to integrate equity into faculty recruiting and hiring?
3) How do professors overcome challenges to institutionalize equity in faculty recruiting
and hiring?
The next section is devoted to two kinds of literature—faculty agency and racial equity in higher
education. I argue that professors who are aware of how racial categories have real economic,
social, and political consequences (Bonilla-Silva, 2015) and are willing to take responsibility to
eliminate racial inequalities (Dowd & Bensimon, 2015) are in a position to deconstruct and
reconstruct boundaries that maintain racial inequity in faculty hiring. As I further outline in the
next section, professors’ personal and professional experiences shape how they interact with
their context to identify the strategies that would help them advance racial equity in faculty
hiring. I conclude with research and practical implications to recruit and hire historically
marginalized professors.
Literature Review: Faculty Agency to Advance Racial Equity
The literature on faculty agency primarily focuses on the conditions that support or
impede professors to advance their careers. O’Meara and colleagues (2011, as cited by Campbell
& O’Meara, 2014) proposed that faculty agency was shaped by and associated with three factors:
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 71

societal, organizational, and individual. At the societal level, the neoliberal pressure for
professors to commercialize knowledge and bring in research grants; the demand for higher
efficiency with fewer resources; and the increase in managerial control over faculty work has
created constraints for faculty to engage in work for the greater good of society (Rhoades, 2015;
Shaker, 2015; Stromquist, 2017). Organizational factors that enable faculty agency include
faculty perceptions of fitting in their department, positive work-life climate, and professional
development resources (Campbell & O’Meara, 2014). Faculty who believe they have
institutional and departmental support for their intellectual and professional growth report greater
agency to achieve career goals (O’Meara et al., 2017). At the individual level, professors’
personal and professional experiences influence their perspectives and actions (Gonzales, 2014).
Critical race theorists argue that racially minoritized professors must enact their agency
merely to survive oppressive environments, even as they simultaneously take steps to advance
their careers (Ford, 2011; Gonzales, 2018; Griffin, Pifer, Humphrey, & Hazelwood, 2011; Sulé,
2014). Racially minoritized faculty describe their experiences in academia as having to negotiate
tensions between how they view themselves and how their institutions view them (Levin,
Walker, Haberler, & Jackson-Boothby, 2013). As faculty, racially minoritized individuals have
an insider status in academia, but the intersectionality of their minoritized identities (e.g., race,
gender, sexuality) places them as outsiders within the professoriate. On the one hand, the
professional experiences of racially minoritized faculty in publishing with top-tier journals lead
them to reproduce structures that accrue rewards (Gonzales, 2014). On the other hand, the
coupling of isolation with experiences of racism in the forms of micro-aggressions, tokenization,
and covert and overt forms of racial bias (Kelly et al., 2017; Smith, 2015, Sue, Rivera, Watkins,
Kim, Kim, & Williams, 2011; Turner et al., 2008) contribute to racially minoritized professors
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 72

resisting or transforming structures (Baez, 2000; Ford, 2011; Gonzales, 2018; Griffin et al.,
2011; Sulé, 2014).
In this study, faculty agency refers to the “concrete actions or practices that faculty
employ in order to earn or maintain a space of legitimacy within academia” (Gonzales, 2014, p.
198). From this perspective, I argue that professors’ personal and professional experiences
inform their actions to advance racial equity in faculty hiring. Researchers have primarily
focused on career advancement without considering how race and its intersections with other
systems of power shape faculty agency for racial equity. However, most professors are not
socialized and trained in their graduate programs to address racial equity (Gardner, 2010).
Instead, faculty are socialized to be professionals in disciplinary fields bounded by prevailing
epistemologies, theories, and methods (Lamont, 2009; Posselt, 2016) that are rooted in white,
male, and Western norms (Gonzales, 2018; Patton, 2016). Professors who decide to pursue
equity goals may be deterred by colleagues who feel that social justice work is not a legitimate
part of a professor’s role (Delgado & Villalpando, 2002). Inquiry-based interventions create
spaces for professors to develop the critical knowledge and credibility to engage in racial equity
work, which is further describe in the following section.
Inquiry-Based Interventions to Address Racial Equity
Equity researchers emphasize the significance of inquiry-based interventions to set equity
goals and make universities accountable to investing resources to meet those goals (Bragg &
Durham, 2012; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015; Sidman-Taveau & Hoffman, 2018). Inquiry is a
knowledge production process where organizational practitioners use research tools to define the
problem and develop the expertise to bring about change in institutional policies, practices, and
organizational structure and culture (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Reason, 1994). However,
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 73

faculty have different conceptions and commitments to equity that may explain differences in
learning how to address issues with racial equity (Ching, 2018). For example, higher education
practitioners, such as faculty, often interpret equity as equal access to opportunity (Dowd &
Bensimon, 2015). While others conceive equity as equal outcomes in participation and
representation (Dowd, 2003, 2007). Moreover, the social context for learning, such as structured
interventions, “matters not only for what is said, but who is relaying the message and whether
that individual is perceived as credible” (Ching, 2018, p. 416). I define racial equity as a situation
where educational practices and policies produce equal outcomes among racial and ethnic faculty
and enable racially minoritized professors to work in environments free from discrimination and
bias.
Equity researchers in higher education investigate the ways inquiry activities, such as
analyzing course syllabi and student outcome data, facilitate professors’ cognitive development
from deficit-mindedness to equity-mindedness (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Ching, 2018; Dowd
& Bensimon, 2015; Dowd et al., 2015; Felix et al., 2015; Peña, 2012). Equity-minded faculty are
more aware of the sociocultural context of exclusionary practices, are critical of racism in higher
education, and are conscious of the impact of power asymmetries on opportunities and outcomes
(Bensimon & Malcom, 2012). Equity-minded professors are empowerment agents who
deliberately enact their agency to empower racially minoritized groups (Stanton-Salazar, 2011).
Studies have shown that faculty who participated in inquiry-based interventions have re-
evaluated their assumptions about the behaviors of racially minoritized students (Bustillos et al.,
2011), gained an understanding of how culturally relevant texts can create positive classroom
experiences for racially minoritized students (Rueda, 2012), developed critical and racial
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 74

consciousness when interacting with racially minoritized students (Peña, 2012), and came to
establish a sense of agency to work for equity (Bishop, 2014).
Most research on equity in higher education has concentrated on administrators and
faculty taking actions to reach parity in student outcomes. The focus of this study, however,
conceptualizes disparities in faculty experiences among Black, Latinx, and Native American
professors as evidence of inequity. Research on inquiry and racial equity in higher education has
primarily focused on student outcomes and the conceptual development of equity-mindedness
(Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015). Thus, a critical examination of
professors identifying and changing practices and policies that historically exclude racially
minoritized faculty is crucial to understand the strategies they use to advance racial equity in
faculty hiring. This study is significant because understanding the factors that facilitate and
impede faculty agency for racial equity may help shape practices and policies in higher education
designed to increase racial diversity and participation in the professoriate. In the following
section, I describe the theoretical lens to advance research on faculty agency for racial equity.
Conceptual Framework: Cultural Historical Activity Theory
I applied cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to analyze data on faculty involved in
an inquiry-based intervention to embed equity into faculty recruiting and hiring. CHAT’s
theoretical and historical underpinnings can be traced back to the Russian psychologist Lev
Vygotsky and his students, most notably Aleksei N Leont’ev (Lee, 2011; Roth & Lee, 2007).
Drawing on CHAT, human learning is always mediated and regulated by historical and cultural
processes (Lee, 2011; Roth & Lee, 2007). Instead of focusing on the direct impact of the
stimulus on the response, CHAT postulates that human beings react to and act upon mediating
factors of the environment (Engeström, 2008; Lee, 2011), such as university missions and
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 75

campus climate. An activity is a collection of interconnected interactions that mediate the
relationship between people and the task at hand. Individuals engage in an activity with others to
create new knowledge that helps them make sense of the world and to modify their behaviors
(Roth & Lee, 2007). Each activity, such as graduate admissions, teaching, or publishing, is
organized by its historical and cultural context (Engeström, 2008; Lee, 2011; Roth & Lee, 2007).
CHAT researchers who examine action research settings focus on how the historical and
cultural processes of an activity system affect the collaborative inquiry process. An activity is not
merely a task with a start and completion, but rather an evolving structure of mediated and
collective action (Engeström, 2008; Roth & Lee, 2007). An activity system triangle serves as a
heuristic to illustrate the mediating interactions of the different elements in an activity
(Engeström, 1987). According to Engeström (2008), activities are “systems that produce events
and actions and evolve over long periods of sociohistorical time” (p. 26). College campuses,
disciplinary departments, classrooms, faculty governance committees, and faculty research are
examples of activity systems with motives that are historically informed by social and cultural
processes.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 76

Figure 3.1. Inquiry-Based Intervention as an Activity System.
Figure 3.1. depicts the inquiry-based intervention as an activity system to illustrate how
faculty interact with their context to embed racial equity into faculty hiring. Faculty in this study
(subjects) participated in the activity system with the motive (object) to embed equity into
faculty recruiting and hiring to increase the number of racially minoritized professors on campus
(outcome). Social and cultural processes that manifest as artifacts, rules, division of labor, and
community mediate the relationship between subject and object (Engeström, 2008; Lee, 2011;
Roth & Lee, 2007). Artifacts are the cognitive and material tools subjects use to meet the object.
As shown in Figure 3.1., the faculty search guidelines, evaluation rubrics, and data disaggregated
by race mediate the relationship between faculty participants and the motive to embed equity in
faculty hiring. How artifacts mediate the subject-object relationship occurs in the context of a
community. The community in the inquiry-based activity system includes administrators and
faculty search committee members whose interactions are governed by rules and the division of
labor. The rules of the inquiry-based activity system require those involved to be reflective about
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 77

and identify the role of the campus culture in their decision-making. Together, the mediated
dimensions of an activity system allow the subject to change the motive to meet an outcome
(Lee, 2011).
Inner Contradictions as Opportunities for Learning
Faculty hiring is a mechanism that reproduces the power to choose and distribute
resources. In the context of racial equity in faculty hiring, professors are disrupting and changing
the standard operating procedures that historically reward theories, epistemologies, and methods
rooted in white, male, Western norms at the expense of excluding racially minoritized groups
(Delgado-Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; Gonzales, 2018; Patton, 2016). The emotional component
of racial equity work often goes unexplored in the literature even though racial discourses trigger
negative emotional responses that create obstacles toward organizational change (Sue, Torino,
Capodilupo, Rivera, & Lin, 2009; 2011). Although white and racially minoritized professors
experience similar emotional reactions toward racial discourses such as fear, anxiety, and anger
(Sue et al., 2009; 2011), they enter racial dialogues with different experiences with racism
(Leonardo & Porter, 2010). For white educators, topics about racism are intellectual projects
while for racially minoritized people they are lived experiences (Leonardo & Porter, 2010).
Focusing on the emotions and systems of power associated with racial equity in faculty hiring
aligns with CHAT’s focus on mediating social and cultural processes (Lee, 2011).
Although faculty may share the same motive to change faculty hiring, they may not share
the same values for improving the hiring process. Inquiry provides opportunities for subjects to
interrogate taken-for-granted activity system mediators. Subjects may experience inner
contradictions when new mediators are introduced to the activity system (Engeström, 2008). This
occurs when inner contradictions arise in response to awareness about misalignments in the
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 78

subject’s espoused values and practices. Inner contradictions create cognitive and emotional
dissonance which motivate participants to take actions to resolve tensions. When subjects with
diverse professional identities (e.g., professional rank, disciplinary expertise) and social identities
(e.g., race, gender) collaborate to address a common problem, their situated positions within the
structure they want to change can create inner contradictions. For example, white faculty who
learn that their practices implicate the marginalization of their racially minoritized faculty
colleagues are in a position to align their practices with their motive of racial equity. CHAT
addresses the current limitations of faculty agency by highlighting the dialectic relationship
between agency and structure within a context of organizational change. A focus on faculty
agency allows researchers to investigate further the ways professors’ personal and professional
identities shape their interactions with the activity system’s mediating factors.
Methodology
This study is a narrative inquiry of professors advancing racial equity in faculty hiring.
Professors in this study participated in an inquiry-based intervention where they used race-
conscious and equity-oriented language and tools to interrogate their campus culture. Narrative
inquiry was an appropriate approach because the focus was on how professors made sense of
their experiences interacting with their context to advance racial equity in faculty hiring (Daiute,
2014; Souto-Manning, 2014). In line with the conceptual underpinnings reviewed in this study—
faculty agency and CHAT—narrative inquiry allowed me to connect professors’ personal and
professional histories with the structures their social locations are embedded (Souto-Manning,
2014). This article reflects findings from extended fieldwork I conducted from December 2015
to November 2016. In this section, I describe the action research setting, the sampling, the data
collection, the analysis design, and the limitations of the study.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 79

Study Site: Valley Oaks University’s Partnership with the Center for Urban Education
Valley Oaks University (pseudonym), located in the Western U.S., is a religiously-
affiliated private liberal arts university with a total enrollment of about 5,000 undergraduate
students. In 2016, Valley Oaks University (VOU) became a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), a
federal designation for accredited universities with an undergraduate population that is at least 25
percent Hispanic, with a significant proportion of college students being low-income and first-
generation (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). At the time of the study, VOU’s
undergraduate students were 58% white, 27% Latinx, 4% Black, 6% Asian-American, and 5%
multiracial. Faculty demographics at VOU mirrored national trends with 82% White, 7% Asian-
American and Pacific Islander, 6% Latinx, and 3% Black.
Table 3.1.

Faculty Hiring Outcomes from 2013-2014 to 2016-2017

Race 2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016 2016-2017 Total
Asian 0 0 1 3 4
Black 0 2 0 2 2
Latinx 1 0 5 1 7
White 7 6 1 3 17
Did Not Disclose 0 0 1 0 1

In 2007, VOU’s accreditation agency recommended the administration to develop a
formal plan to increase diversity in student, staff, and faculty. Although the university had made
real progress in many of the areas that required attention (e.g., student diversity), by 2015 VOU
had yet to implement a formal and transparent recruiting and hiring process to increase the
number of Black, Latinx, and Native American faculty. As seen in Table 3.1., from the 2013-
2014 to the 2015-2016 academic year nine out of the 24 available faculty appointments were
filled by a racially minoritized professor. The accreditation team noted how the lack of a formal
and transparent faculty hiring process cultivated department and program faculty cultures that
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 80

maintained “the status quo in the face of the very real effort required and resentment toward the
administration’s attempts to question faculty hiring decision[s]" (p. 7). Ultimately, the
accreditation team concluded that VOU’s efforts to racial equity were “a passive and anemic
approach to faculty recruitment and hiring, in spite of good intentions” (VOU’s Accreditation
Report, 2015 p. 7).
Professor Eric Nuñez, a Latino tenured professor, believed that the “[accreditation] report
told the leadership that they needed to do something about diversity because faculty diversity
hadn’t moved in 10 years, but student diversity had really exploded.” The accreditation report
and “faculty getting upset” about the racial campus culture “gave the Provost the authority to
step in and say okay I have the legitimacy now.” VOU administrators, with the support of
professors, reached out to the Center for Urban Education (CUE) for help to increase the number
of racially minoritized professors on campus. In January 2016, VOU’s provost invested
resources to create a team of 17 professors who were committed to racial equity. The 17 faculty
members used CUE’s tools to interrogate and change policies and practices that create and
maintain racial inequity (Bensimon, 2012). The group of professors assembled as an evidence
team and exposed the ways their campus culture impeded efforts to advance racial equity in
faculty hiring and developed the critical knowledge to take on leadership roles. During the
January 2016 Winter Faculty Retreat, the provost outlined VOU’s partnership with CUE to make
the university’s faculty hiring process more equitable and introduced the evidence team to the
faculty body. This group of faculty participated in seven CUE developed professional
development workshops, called evidence team meetings, over the course of 10 months (see
Table 3.2.). As members of the evidence team, these professors identified themselves as equity
advocates because of their responsibility to “transform information into knowledge and
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 81

knowledge into the basis for improved organizational performance” (Dowd, Malcom, Nakamoto,
& Bensimon, 2012, p. 192). As seen in Table 3.2., each evidence team meeting included
activities that helped the evidence team define the problem of racial inequity.
Table 3.2.

Evidence Team Meetings

Date Purpose Activities Significant
Events/Conversations
January 2016* Introduction to
VOU and CUE
partnership
Break-out sessions on
equity and race

February 2016 Kick-off to build
equity in faculty
recruitment and
hiring
Warm-up about
unspoken rules;
presentation of
disaggregated data by
race; mapping hiring
process
Discussion about VOU’s
culture of niceness; created
ground rules; team agreed to
only share a timeline with non-
team members until progress
has been made
March 2016 Outlining equity
competencies to
change faculty
recruiting and
hiring
Warm-up about the
person who helped
faculty transition to
VOU; mapping who is
responsible for equity
and campus
identity/culture
Emotional conversation about
racially minoritized faculty
holding the most burden for
equity; stories about racism on
campus; questions about the
type of environment racially
minoritized faculty were being
brought into
April 2016** Analyzing culture
and practices
around faculty
recruiting, hiring,
and retention
Team inquiry: e-map
orientation interviews;
asset mapping for
retention; thoughts on
faculty search guidelines
The team agreed to de-
emphasize the “why” of equity
work and approach it as a
mandate with consequences;
raising issues with extra work
racially minoritized faculty do
that goes unrewarded in tenure
and promotion
May 2016 Building a diverse
pool and job
announcement
Defining equity
advocate roles; warm-up
on search committee
stories; identified
problematic areas on
faculty search
guidelines; review of
team inquiry interviews;
passive and active
Search committee chairs were
invited to participate in
workshops (were not part of
the emotional event and
analysis of campus culture and
racism);
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 82

recruiting strategies;
equity-minded job
announcement exemplar
September 2016 Selection of
candidates and
phone interviews
(role of implicit
bias)
Presentation on implicit
bias; pair reflection on
implicit bias in search
committees; fishbowl
activity on implicit bias
Team defining the role of
equity advocates on search
committees; the creation of a
check-list to ensure search
committees are embedding
equity; team emphasized that
equity did not mean that white
candidates will no longer be
hired; questions about
standardizing evaluation
rubrics
October 2016 Phone interviews
and campus visit
Warm-up on how would
faculty candidates
respond to equity-
minded interview
questions; developing
core questions and
mapping them to equity-
mindedness; developing
a plan to evaluate
equitably; minimizing
bias in a campus visit
Faculty search committee
chairs had concerns about
developing equity-minded
rubrics; evidence team member
offered to share her
committee’s rubrics as a
template
November 2016 Selection of
finalist, campus
climate, and
faculty retention
Presentation of findings
from data collected on
VOU racially
minoritized faculty;
reviewing campus visit
protocols; finalizing
faculty search guidelines
Non-evidence team members
questioning the validity of
interview data; team agreed to
(re)define the culture of
niceness as the culture of non-
confrontational; during warm-
up most white faculty shared
that being on the evidence
team was a learning process
Note. * This meeting was not an evidence team meeting but it was the first public conversation
about VOU’s collaboration with CUE to embed equity into faculty hiring.

The structure of most meetings included a warm-up exercise that required evidence team
members to describe the campus culture and name taken-for-granted norms and practices. Then
CUE facilitators outlined the day’s objectives and activities, followed by conversations about
how to use the knowledge produced thus far to change the Faculty Search Guidelines. The
Faculty Search Guidelines is a formal VOU document that describes the hiring procedures. CUE
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 83

researchers then presented information on critical concepts, such as equity-mindedness, before
faculty participants broke-off into small group activities. After each group activity, CUE
facilitators guided discussions and debriefs about the day’s events.
Sampling
VOU was an excellent site for this study because of the evidence team’s effort to use
equity-minded artifacts to change their faculty hiring process. The VOU evidence team’s
involvement in an action research project not only provided a window into faculty interaction
with an inquiry-based intervention, but it also allowed faculty to interrogate their campus culture.
This latter process had the pragmatic goal of advancing racial equity in faculty hiring. Also,
VOU’s identity as a religiously-affiliated institution and the university’s focus on teaching
shaped how faculty made sense about the significance of racial equity, which is informative
when considering equity in faculty hiring as a matter of social justice. From a theoretical
standpoint, I conceptualized the evidence team meetings and faculty hiring as separate activity
systems. The data collection focused on how the evidence team’s changes to the Faculty Search
Guidelines introduced new mediating factors that transformed VOU’s faculty hiring process. By
thinking about the evidence team meetings as an activity system, I was able to identify the
mediating factors that supported faculty participants to change the hiring process.
Table 3.3.

Faculty Evidence Team Members

Pseudonym Race Gender Tenure Academic Discipline
Lauren Cortez* Black Female Yes Humanities
Kevin Boyer* White Male Yes Humanities
Scott Jones* White Male No Sciences
Jenna Stevens White Female Yes Sciences
Jason Wright White Male No Humanities
Leslie Hurtado Latina Female No Graduate Studies
Donna Evens* White Female Yes Social Sciences
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 84

Rebecca Briggs White Female No Graduate Studies
Federick Green Asian Male Yes Humanities
Paul Danielson White Male Yes Graduate Studies
James Ward* White Male Yes Graduate Studies
Taylor Bush* White Female Yes Sciences
Adriana Patton* White Female No Humanities
Eric Nuñez* Latino Male Yes Social Sciences
Gloria Arce* Latina Female No Graduate Studies
Susana Gomez* Latina Female No Graduate Studies
Brian Cook* Black Male Yes Social Sciences
Karen Creswell White Male Yes Academic Affairs
Note. *Faculty who were interviewed

As seen in Table 3.3., the evidence team consisted of ten white, four Latinx, two Black,
and one Asian professor. Nine faculty team members were females, and eight were males with
disciplinary representation from the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and graduate studies.
Eleven of the faculty had tenure, five were junior faculty, and one was a senior lecturer.
Positionality
I came into this work as a Latino, first-generation, and working-class doctoral student. As
a CUE researcher, I had the opportunity to interact with and support professors in this study as
they interrogated their campus racial culture and used tools to advance racial equity. My role as a
CUE researcher allowed me to develop a rapport with the faculty participants over the course of
the seven workshops. I was aware of how my affiliation with CUE and racial identity shaped
how faculty participants interacted with me. For example, most faculty participants would ask
about my dissertation progress, career plans, and offered advice. However, my affiliation with
CUE, when CUE was under contract with VOU’s administration, might have also created
challenges for some faculty to participate in the study. I often wondered and wrote about how
some professors may have believed that VOU’s administration would have access to the data I
collected. I recognized the advantages and disadvantages of my positionality and took measures
to be transparent with my participants.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 85

Data Collection
I observed
4
seven evidence team meetings from February 2016 to November 2016 for a
total of 24 hours (see Appendix F for more information), interviewed eleven evidence team
members, and collected relevant documents. As seen in Table 3.2., 17 professors and the
university provost participated in group conversations and small-group activities to reflect on and
take action to identify and change VOU’s values and practices that have historically excluded
Black, Latinx, and Native American faculty from being hired. The observation protocol focused
on faculty interactions with team members, CUE consultants, and equity-minded artifacts (e.g.,
data disaggregated by race and job announcements with explicit language on race and equity; see
Appendix G for observation protocol). I composed field notes and reflective memos about
interactions, conflicts, engagement with activities, and reactions to race talk.
Although the evidence team meetings were the primary source of observation data for
this study, I also observed five other faculty interactions. Two meetings where both faculty team
leaders, the university provost, a dean, two chairs of faculty governance, and (at the second
meeting) the Hispanic-Serving Institution coordinator, and the university president designed a
plan to sustain efforts to institutionalize equitable practices in faculty life (e.g., faculty hiring,
faculty orientation, and faculty retention and promotion). I also observed two faculty retreats
where equity efforts were discussed and one meeting where the Provost went over the new
Faculty Search Guidelines with the 12 faculty search committees that convened during the 2016-
2017 academic year. The observation data gave me insight into the actual behaviors of faculty
changing their hiring process while also informing the interview protocol designed to capture

4
See Appendix D for recruitment emails and Appendix E information sheet
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 86

how the participants experienced being on the evidence team and to reflect on significant events
and conversations (see Table 3.2.).
Each interview lasted about sixty minutes and all interviews, except the one with Dr.
Gloria Arce, were recorded and professionally transcribed. The interview protocol captured
faculty experiences as team members, their individual and group’s perspectives on equity, and
conflicts or challenges they encountered when making changes to the university’s Faculty Search
Guidelines (see Appendix H for interview protocol). I also inquired about significant moments
such as an emotional conversation about racially minoritized faculty and their experiences with
racism on campus or whether the addition of faculty search committee chairs who were not
evidenced team members changed the group’s dynamics. Throughout my time at VOU, I
collected documents such as VOU’s accreditation report, Faculty Search Guidelines, reflections
by faculty on activities, evaluation rubrics, and email exchanges. Overall, observation data was
used to investigate faculty actions to institutionalize equitable practices (see Appendix I for the
connection between theory and observation protocol), while the interviews were designed to
understand faculty experiences of participating in a socially and professionally diverse group to
use race-conscious and equity-minded language and tools (see Appendix I for the connection
between theory and interview protocol). Documents were collected and analyzed to track how
the language used to communicate VOU’s values and norms changed over time.
Analytical Process
I conducted four phases of analysis in this study and used NVivo 11 for the ongoing
composition of memos, coding, and analysis. I employed dynamic narrative inquiry in my
analysis, which views storytelling as a socio-cultural tool that individuals use to connect with
others, negotiate social structures, and make sense of their surroundings (Daiute, 2014). The first
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 87

step was to understand the broader narrative within each interview by breaking it down into
component parts and seeing how they related to each other (Polkinghorne, 1995). I read and
listened to each transcript multiple times to identify passages that I perceived as the beginning,
middle, and ending of plots, or stories conveyed in the larger narrative. In the second phase, I
used Dauite’s (2014) plot analysis technique to organize data into plots with initiating actions,
complicating actions, high points, resolution strategies, codas, and endings. Plot analysis focuses
on identifying the issues and orientations of narrators to resolve them through narrating (Daiute,
2014). Plot analysis allowed me to understand how narrative structure provides narrators with a
means for interacting with issues in the environment. I identified 7 to 14 plots for each faculty
participant, for a total of 94 plots across all interview transcripts (see Appendix J for plot
example). I coded each plot element to evaluate and describe the meaning of each plot. For
example, the most commonly occurring high points were issues about the “capacity for equity
work,” “structural racism,” and “communicating equity goals.” The most commonly occurring
resolution strategies revolved around the “commitment to equity work,” “reflecting about
racism,” and “using tools to focus on change.” As seen in Table 3.4, I compiled similarly
structured plots for a total of 11 different types of plot narratives with the most common being
about standardizing equity practices (n = 18), the reality of racism (n = 14), clear equity goals (n
= 11), and systemic change (n = 11).
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 88

Table 3.4.

Examples of Codes for Plot Elements

Code Code Description Code Example
High
point—
Resistance
Issues about experiencing resistance from
colleagues about the purpose, goals, and/or
implementation of racial equity in faculty hiring
It’s sort of like, you know, so there is this subtle kind of push back like
are we going to be allowed to have any white candidates. So that was a
challenge

I think a lot of white faculty are going to say well it is going to hurt the
chances for more white faculty to get hired

I was almost met with some resistance, and I don’t know whether it was
just something new and they are uncomfortable with or they just thought
well it doesn’t matter the best person will get the job
High
point—
Process
Issues about the process of advancing racial
equity through the inquiry-based intervention
I think the only disadvantage that they might have is that they haven’t been
part of the process all along to really kind of you know to witness all of
those things

So that’s encouraging so right now with things have been moving in the
right direction. So I’m personally pretty encouraged but again you are
looking around and you see that things can go south fairly quickly you
know

But if everybody is the diversity advocate right then does it kind of
diminish what it means to be an advocate does it um you obviously want
to normalize diversity in a way, but by normalizing it right, there may be
things you lose about it okay
Resolution
strategy—
Connecting evidence team’s efforts to university
goals for racial equity
I just thought we’re all trying to help here. Why are you coming down on
me on this? You know, we’re trying to carry out the universities wishes

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 89

University
goals
Because, again, because it's an institutional priority and its one that I am
committed to

I don’t want to be seen as too much of an expert or take on too much
responsibility for shepherding a university’s equity focus because that’s
actually a real job
Resolution
strategy—
FSG
Referencing the Faculty Search Guidelines
resolve tensions within and outside the evidence
team
To have search guidelines that are not only attentive to the legal questions
and disciplinary process of hiring an academic. Right but the search
guidelines that are actually attentive to and informed by research

And we need to follow the spirit of this document

So, I do think I feel that in the future when I participate that I have
stronger legs to stand on. Now that we have the document that I’ve
participated in those discussions
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 90
In the third phase, I used script analysis which is a technique to group plots with similar
structures of complicating actions, high points, and resolution strategies into larger stories
(Daiute, 2014). To apply script analysis, I synthesized patterns running through the 11 plot
narratives based on similar plot-logic structure (e.g., complicating actions, high points, and
resolution strategies) into three larger stories. As seen in Table 3.5., plots on “Clear Equity
Goals,” “Standardizing Equity Practices,” and “Structure of Meetings” were collapsed into a
larger story about issues with the equity process because of resistance from white senior
professors. To resolve this tension, the informants communicated to senior white faculty that
equity efforts aligned with the university’s goals to racially diversify the faculty body.
Table 3.5.

Example of Script Analysis

Plot elements Clear equity goals Standardizing equity
practices
Structure of meetings
Complicating action Communication;
goals; challenges;
power dynamics;
facilitation; capacity
Capacity;
communication;
goals; defining
equity;
accountability; stories
about racism; staff
hiring; support
equity; inquiry
Capacity; goals;
defining equity;
implicit bias
High point Resistance; implicit
bias; welcoming;
structures and race;
faculty recruitment;
process; legitimacy
equity; voice
Process; support;
implicit bias; faculty
recruitment;
structures and race;
legitimacy equity;
resistance
Process; voice;
structures and race;
support; faculty
recruitment;
legitimacy equity
Resolution strategy University goals;
commitment;
communication;
collective leadership;
tools; colleague;
informed; translating;
psychological; coping
with emotions
Tools; reflection;
commitment;
defining equity;
holistic evaluation;
collective leadership;
translating;
optimistic;
psychological;
Communication;
psychological;
university goals;
commitment; group
interactions; race
conscious practices;
reflection
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 91

informed;
communication

At this stage, I triangulated the interview data with observation and document data. I
cross-referenced each script with observation memos to complement the findings with events and
interactions during evidence team meetings. In the final stage, I used CHAT and faculty agency
to develop analytic questions to move my analysis beyond description. Analytic questions guide
researchers to search directly for responses to research questions while being flexible to relevant
content and contextual information (Neumann & Pallas, 2015). For example, “How do
professors interact with the inquiry-based activity system?” “How do professors’ experiences
with racism inform their agentic perspectives and agentic actions within the inquiry-based
activity system?” “Are there differences between pre-tenured and tenured professors?” “Are
there racial differences in faculty agency?” Through these steps, I produced findings that
illustrate the ways faculty enacted their collective agency to overcome challenges to embed
equity in faculty hiring.
Limitations
A limitation of this study was the data’s reliance on a self-selected group. The majority of
faculty participants in this study were already prepared to make changes to faculty recruitment
and hiring. When faculty search committee chairs who were not part of the original seventeen
evidence team members joined the workshops, it became evident that there was resistance to
equity work among non-evidence team members. Further, this study does not capture the voices
of those who may be resistant to embedding equity in faculty hiring. Finally, the study did not
collect data on faculty search committees implementing racial equity, which is documented in
chapter four.

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Findings
This section details the context in which faculty made conceptual changes, developed
from collegial interactions and evolving knowledge, to embed racial equity in faculty hiring. I
organized the findings into two sections starting with the “Opening Act” where professors
disrupted the unspoken norms that organized faculty life at VOU. In this section, I show how
inquiry-based interventions focusing on racism create spaces for professors to uncover the
detrimental effects of racism in the lives of racially minoritized professors. In doing so, faculty
learned that there were at least two different motivations why professors were involved in racial
equity work. The “Intermission” section transitions into the ways the events in the “Opening
Act” lead to professors taking collection actions to change the structure of faculty hiring. Before
presenting the findings, I describe the formal and informal ways faculty were advancing racial
equity prior to joining the evidence team to illustrate the various approaches to such work.
As the administration evaluated the accreditation team’s report, some professors
pressured the administration to address the lack of racially diverse faculty on campus. Professors
Donna Evans and Kevin Boyer, both white tenured professors, were on a campus committee
responsible for professional development. Through this formal channel, Drs. Evans and Boyer
analyzed data disaggregated by race on faculty and wrote a report about the lack of Black,
Latinx, and other historically marginalized groups in the faculty body and delivered it to the
provost and president. Dr. Boyer recollected how “in conversation with other faculty members
and particularly faculty members of color that we first brought [the report] to [the Provost] and to
[the President] to say look this is like faculty diversity is a big problem.” In addition to
highlighting equity gaps in faculty hiring, the committee “suggested that [VOU] get some
outside consultants in and so [the committee] had talked about that a lot and looked at data about
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 93

how we were doing and in what areas we were behind,” according to Dr. Evans. In a strategic
move, racially minoritized faculty stayed in communication with Drs. Boyer’s and Evans’
committee to pressure the administration to work with external consultants who could provide
the university with language and tools to change the culture and structure to hire Black and
Latinx professors.
Beyond the formal report and its supporters, the conversation about racial equity was
taking place in different areas of campus. At the 2016 winter faculty retreat, I observed a
breakout session about a student protest on campus and how university administrators and
faculty facilitated conversations about race. The discussion in this breakout session was about the
inactions of administration leadership in response to racism. A panelist shared a story about
Black students asking the university president to define institutional racism, to which the
president responded, according to the presenter, “[institutional racism is] when you believe that
you don’t have equal opportunities.” The president’s understanding of institutional racism was
problematic because it fails to consider the systemic issues ingrained in the university’s policies
and practices. These type of problems on campus prompted racially minoritized professors not
only to ask VOU administration to hire Black, Latinx, and Native American faculty but also to
develop the capacity to address issues of racism on campus. In the following section, I outline
the ways of participating in an inquiry-based intervention provided opportunities for professors
to have frank conversations about race.
The Opening Act: Disrupting the Unspoken
The inquiry-based intervention provided opportunities for faculty to collectively
interrogate the campus culture to identify why the university has had trouble recruiting and
hiring racially minoritized professors. In the first meeting in February, after the university
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 94

president’s welcoming remarks, CUE researchers reviewed the agenda for the five-hour meeting
before moving into an icebreaker. Faculty participants chuckled when they saw the warm-up
question that was projected on a PowerPoint slide. It asked them to identify “an unspoken rule
you would share with a new faculty member that would provide a newcomer with critical
cultural knowledge of [Valley Oaks University]?” Faculty relied on their personal experiences or
their observations of faculty life to respond to the warm-up question. For example, as a member
of a minoritized group himself, Dr. Jason Wright, a white gay male pre-tenured professor, started
the conversation by stating “that [racially minoritized professors] would be asked to represent
minority groups.” Following Dr. Wright’s response, the faculty decided to share-out in order of
their sitting arrangement table by table. Dr. Rebecca Briggs, a white female pre-tenured
professor, who was sitting next to Dr. Wright, said that she would tell a newly hired faculty
member to “not volunteer for things.”
Dr. Brian Cook, who was a long-time and highly respected Black male tenured professor,
said that the university’s “culture of niceness was the reason it was hard to be frank about
racism.” Following his statement, many faculty had side conversations and nodded their heads in
agreement. Although Drs. Paul Danielson, white male tenured professor, and Adriana Patton,
white female pre-tenured professor, moved the conversation to providing incoming faculty with
technical advice, such as advising new faculty to interact with departmental secretaries, Dr.
Karen Creswell, a white female who was a professor before transitioning into a senior
administration position, brought back the conversation to the culture of niceness. She said that
“because of the culture of niceness pre-tenured faculty never speak out.” After Dr. Creswell’s
remarks, the rest of the twelve faculty described how and why the culture of niceness created
challenges to address racism on campus.
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The warm-up on unspoken norms prompted professors to think about their experiences
navigating the culture of niceness as pre-tenured, female, or racially minoritized faculty. Faculty
described the culture of niceness as something that is largely invisible, yet visible through
interactions with senior white male professors. Dr. Kevin Boyer, a white male tenured professor,
commented that the “culture of niceness operated below the surface.” For example, senior white
male professors’ “notice who keeps their doors open and closed,” “who attends and does not
attend faculty meetings,” and “who volunteers,” according to Drs. Scott James, Jenna Stevens,
and Donna Evans, respectively. Dr. Leslie Hurtado, a Latina pre-tenured professor who initially
hesitated to share her perspective, further emphasized the significance of “avoiding conflict” and
“maintaining collegiality” for senior white male professors “to like you.” Dr. Gloria Arce, a
Latina pre-tenured professor, said that the culture of niceness made her question “who can and
can’t be trusted.” Drs. Susana Gomez, a Latina pre-tenured professor, and Federick Green, an
Asian male pre-tenured professor, attributed the culture of niceness to the university’s “strong
[mainline Protestant] traditions” and its “ideals of inclusivity.” In addition to the university’s
strong religious traditions, according to Dr. Green, VOU’s “ethnic anxiety” keeps the university
from addressing racial equity. Although professors relied on their professional experiences at
VOU, a tenured Black male professor named the culture of niceness as the reason why it was
“hard to be frank about racism.” Only to have two white professors to move the conversation
away from the culture of niceness which required a senior administrator to redirect the
conversation back to the culture of niceness. The redirection of the culture of niceness in this
first meeting was a prelude to the following meeting where professors learned that racially
minoritized faculty experienced the culture of niceness differently than their white peers.
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Evidence team members continued to interrogate the campus culture in the following
meeting in March when they had to identify a “person that helped you when you first arrived to
[VOU]?” In this meeting, faculty questioned the additional burden of racially minoritized
professors “to be public figures,” “to be the voices of their culture,” and “to mentor students of
color.” Faculty participants decided to go table by table to share their thoughts about the warm-
up question. Four faculty participants, including three white professors and one Black professor,
identified Dr. Green as someone who helped them navigate racial discourses. When Dr. Boyer,
the fourth professor who acknowledged Dr. Green, concluded his remarks, Professor Green was
looking down to the floor with his left hand covering his face. Dr. Green, who was sitting next to
Dr. Boyer and was the last person to share, found it “interesting that my colleagues view me as a
source of support, but no one knows or supports me to address the challenges I continue to face.”
He ended his comments by saying that he “didn’t know how much more I can take,” as he put his
head down using his hands to keep his tears from running down his face. As I looked around the
room, I noticed Drs. Arce, Cortez, and Hurtado crying while racially minoritized professors
shared their experiences with racism.
Racially minoritized professors described how the culture of niceness made it difficult for
them to call out their white colleagues who discriminated against them. For example, Dr. Lauren
Cortez, a Black female tenured professor, shared how she saw a white male professor leave “hate
mail in my department mailbox.” She furthered elaborated how she felt awkward having to go to
work knowing who left the letter in her mailbox and not feeling comfortable to raise the issue.
Following this example, Dr. Hurtado shared an experience when white male students referred to
her as “the Latina with the fat ass.” In the interviews, racially minoritized faculty shared how
they were not aware of the extent their racially minoritized colleagues experienced racism. Upon
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 97

learning about their colleagues’ experiences with racism, racially minoritized faculty became
frustrated and disappointed. Dr. Cortez recollected how hearing about Dr. Cook’s experience
with racism over the span of 20 years made her feel frustrated and disappointed that he has
endured such mistreatment.
I love [Dr. Cook]. [Brian] has been here so long. [Brian] is like a granddad. And
to think of [Brian] putting up with shit is what really hit me like I know what it’s
felt like for me, okay but you can’t do that to [Brian]…So, when [Brian] tells you
“here’s what your friends have said to me. Here’s what that person that you think
are the nicest people you would ever know and would trust your kids with. Here’s
what they have done to shape my professional life here, right?” That’s what really
got me, right? And I think as an evidence team that got put at the center of what
we were talking about. It’s not cross-bearing…you’ve chosen not to be aware
enough of what my experience is to help your campus avoid that and be an active
voice among in your own network to help avoid that.
Dr. Cortez’s quote emphasized how most racially minoritized professors perceived the sharing of
stories with racism as an opportunity to humanize equity work and to hold their white colleagues
accountable.
Most white faculty visibly and vocally expressed feeling sad about what their racially
minoritized colleagues experienced. In the March meeting, Dr. Evans said that hearing her
colleagues share experiences with racism made her realize that “I don’t have to be aware of those
things.” In an interview, Dr. Taylor Bush described how she felt when racially minoritized
professors shared the different ways her white colleagues treated them.
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I think that sharing of different stories along the way, I mean like [Dr. Gomez’s]
story about the hate email being sent to her, and [Dr. Hurtado’s] story about being
a Latina. And I was very sad, I mean, honestly Román I was very sad, and I went
home, and I actually cried a bit back then, and it still pisses me off that students
do that? And other faculty do that? To colleagues and friends and I wanna save
them all, when is the point when the administration is going to say enough is
enough.
Dr. Bush’s expression about wanting to save her colleagues could have been a projection of her
racial angst onto racially minoritized professors. However, the evidence team’s focus on inquiry
allowed white faculty, such as Dr. Bush, to identify institutional racism as the cause of their
emotional state. The intense emotional experience also revealed the human aspect of racial
equity work to some professors. Drs. Briggs (white pre-tenured female professor), Cortez (Black
female tenured professor), and Gomez (Latina pre-tenured professor) were visibly crying during
the sharing of experiences with racism. In the interview with Dr. Gloria Arce, a Latina pre-
tenured professor, she recalled the experience as “breaking down some people to empathize with
faculty as human beings.” Dr. Donna Evans, a white female tenured professor, described how
listening to Dr. Brian Cook describe his experience as one of two Black tenured male faculty
made her think about racial equity in concrete ways. Similarly, Dr. Susana Gomez said:
I believe it was the second meeting where sort of things got real, and you know
faculty of color, that’s when they really started talking about the racism,
discrimination, marginalization that was happening with them. And I think that
was an eye-opening experience for a lot of the people in the room and made it sort
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 99

of legitimized why we were doing this project. So, that was really a positive way
to move forward even though it stemmed from hurtful experiences.
In this case, faculty who shared their stories with racism helped the collective sustain their efforts
which created the context for participants to identify the cause of their feelings. For example,
white faculty realized how their racial privilege protected them from being discriminated against
while racially minoritized faculty relived traumatic events. As I further describe in the next
section, the majority of professors believed that CUE’s “facilitation process maximized the
insights, the wisdom, and the experiences that many [faculty] already had at that point,”
according to Dr. Cook. However, a few faculty like, Dr. Adriana Patton, felt that the team was
not well equipped to move the moment in “a good direction.” Dr. Patton expressed feeling
unprepared to articulate her support to racially minoritized colleagues.
The Intermission: Moving from “Why” Racial Equity to “How” to Embed Racial Equity
In this section, I describe professors’ critical knowledge about the culture of niceness
serving as an artifact mediating the actions they believed were appropriate to change the
structure of faculty hiring. During the February and March meetings, faculty identified the
culture of niceness as the primary reason why the university has not actively recruited and hired
racially minoritized professors. The culture of niceness made it difficult to bring up issues of
equity, diversity, and inclusion in faculty hiring. By exposing the culture of niceness, faculty felt
enabled to move forward to identify practices and procedures that systematically excluded racial
minoritized professors from hiring pools. Dr. James Ward, a white male tenured professor,
recalled how the team “[moved] more instrumentally, right we started moving more towards
procedures and practices and specific guidelines and which I think was really important.” Dr.
Kevin Boyer, a white male tenured professor, believed that “having an hour in the open like that,
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 100

now it’s out, now we know that if we are not going to do anything, we are choosing not to do
anything with knowledge of what happens.” He continued by describing how CUE facilitators
“did a really kind of amazing job of taking that [emotional] moment and allowing it to be what it
was, but to help us frame it in a way that could be constructive.” Responses from an evaluation
survey revealed that the evidence team emphasized that the critical knowledge about the culture
of niceness was “something we want to continue to remember and make others aware of so we
can repair the campus culture” because “people [had] the opportunity to be authentic. It was very
moving and powerful.” “It happened. Painful at times, uncomfortable for sure, but freeing as
well.” “We spent time processing the discussion that came up about campus climate.” The
deconstruction of the culture of niceness during the first two meetings helped the team focus on
“how” to change their faculty hiring process instead of developing the language and tools to
explain “why” such changes were needed.
In the third meeting in April, the evidence team had a conversation about inviting search
chairs to participate in the following workshops: “Job Announcements and Developing a Diverse
Pool,” “Selection of Candidates and Phone Interviews,” “Campus Visit—selection of Finalist,”
and “Campus Climate and Faculty Retention.” Faculty participants wondered whether search
chairs would confuse the evidence team’s equity efforts with the conversation about diversity
that occurred during the faculty retreat. For example, faculty questioned whether search chairs
would ask them “didn’t we do that last year?” To address any possible concerns of search chairs,
Dr. Federick Green, an Asian-American male pre-tenured professor, proposed for the evidence
team “to frontload with the why aspect of the importance of diversity in faculty.” According to
Dr. Green, the team should emphasize to search chairs “how we can make these changes to our
procedures” and that “we can provide them guidance in terms of what we’ve learned together.”
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 101

However, Dr. Eric Nuñez, a Latino tenured professor, believed that the evidence team should
“deemphasize the why” and “approach it as a mandate with consequences for not completing.”
In an interview, Dr. Nuñez elaborated on his stance, “I’m not willing to educate faculty about
why diversity matters…there are some things that you don’t even have to explain it’s just time to
do it.” Referring to the conversation about diversity in the previous faculty retreat, Dr. Taylor
Bush, a white female tenured professor, said “we set the scene last year and have to keep moving
forward. Here is what the evidence team has been doing, and here is what we want to do moving
forward.” It is important to emphasize that the search chairs were not part of the racially and
emotionally driven conversations in the first two meetings. As described in the following
sections, the evidence team negotiated the resistance of search chairs who questioned the
significance of racial equity in faculty hiring.
In the following subsections, I highlight three activities that provided opportunities for
faculty to make changes to the Faculty Search Guidelines, a university-wide policy document for
faculty hiring, that they believed would help them advance racial equity in faculty hiring. First, I
outline how a warm-up question prompted faculty to describe the ways implicit bias excludes
racially minoritized faculty from being hired. In the second activity, faculty analyzed the Faculty
Search Guidelines to identify problematic practices and processes. Finally, I outline an activity
that asked faculty to create equity-minded interview questions to implement into their phone and
campus visit interviews. Through their participation in these activities, faculty decided to (1)
require all search committee members take a mandatory implicit bias training; (2) each search
committee to include two trained professors in racial equity; and (3) the Dean and Provost
reserve the right to cancel searches that do not include a racially minoritized semi-finalist and/or
finalist.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 102

First Act: Implicit Bias. In the fourth meeting in May, faculty wrote about their
experiences on faculty search committees on an index card that they shared with colleagues
sitting at the same table then volunteered to share with the entire group. Dr. Nuñez wrote on his
index card, “during a phone interview; a candidate was initially excluded from the pool because
she sounded meek on the phone.” In a similar example, Dr. Evans wrote how the search
committee eliminated a “Latina candidate she knew and recruited” because “there was already a
diverse candidate in the pool,” even after she “pointed out that [the Latina candidate] would
bring much-needed diversity.” In an anonymous response, a faculty participant shared that
during a phone interview the search committee discussed whether a candidate they identified as
“being Urban and African-American (based on voice alone)…would be happy at [VOU].”
Another anonymous faculty shared a story about a search committee chair deciding not to
advance an “API faculty candidate who had a strong accent” because “administrators in the
schools [partnerships] and the community would not respect his communication style.”
The evidence team believed that requiring faculty search committees to take an implicit
bias training would help formalize hiring decision processes. The mandatory implicit bias would
change how faculty search committee members used hiring criteria (e.g., job applications, cover
letters) to evaluate the ways faculty candidates can advance the university’s goals and the added
value they can bring to the department. The evidence team suggested that implicit bias training
would encourage faculty search committees to be reflective about the hiring process and be
intentional about the language and practices they use to make hiring decisions. Dr. Scott Jones, a
white male pre-tenured professor, noted the significance of naming the invisible aspects of the
hiring process.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 103

The implicit bias that goes into things as simple as how you frame the job posting.
You know every part of the search process, how it’s advertised, how you ask
questions in a phone interview all the way to how you tour the campus with the
individual. All can be impacted by bias, and so you really need to consider those
things all throughout the search.
The awareness of the implications of implicit bias in hiring decisions signaled how naming the
invisible, in this case, subjective preferences would help faculty search committees (subjects), in
CHAT terms, create a more transparent and equitable evaluation process (artifacts). In another
example, Dr. Adriana Patton said that standardizing implicit bias training would result in faculty
search committees taking holistic approaches to evaluate job applications:
Now that [the implicit bias] training is being standardized here on campus, and I
think that’s a good refresher for everybody to really think about those things and
how they really impact when you’re looking at people’s CVs. And you think well
this is the experience that I had and so by human nature. We’re kind of looking to
mirror [implicit bias training] to kind of clear that off and say okay let’s make a
broader definition for what it is that we’re looking to achieve and how to go about
achieving it.
Dr. Patton’s description of standardizing equity practices illustrates the ways team members
believed training in implicit bias would require faculty search committee members to be aware of
the use of language. In the quote above, broadening the definition of diversity meant moving
away from colorblind approaches to more race-conscious and critical examinations of job
applications. The next section highlights an activity where professors analyzed their Faculty
Search Guidelines to identify areas where implicit bias and discriminatory practices can occur.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 104

Second Act: Faculty Search Guidelines. In the same May meeting described above,
faculty participated in an activity to analyze the Faculty Search Guidelines. The Faculty Search
Guidelines had three main sections including rules about the search process, interview process,
and selection process. The objective of the activity was for faculty to identify practices and
procedures that were not clear, that were ineffective, and that were too difficult to implement.
Faculty broke into three groups, and each group analyzed one section of the Faculty Search
Guidelines. In addition to proposing changes to the use of language, including verbs (e.g., from
“should” to “must”) and words (e.g., Hispanic-Serving Institution), every group raised concerns
about the role of Deans to enforce the implementation of the Faculty Search Guidelines.
Although evidence team members decided to grant deans the power to cancel searches,
the provost’s active involvement with racial equity efforts held more symbolic power. The
evidence team determined that each faculty search committee had to document every step of
their decision-making and prove to the provost, who makes the job offer to faculty candidates,
that the committee took every measure to hire a Black, Latinx, or Native American professor.
Although Dr. James Ward was concerned about administration intervening in faculty
governance, the majority of faculty emphasized made efforts to emphasize that professors were
leading the equity efforts with the support from the provost. Dr. Taylor Bush said that “[w]e can
implement as much as we can but at the end of the day is the provost who still makes the
decision to go forward or not.” Dr. Nuñez argued that the Provost had the authority to tell
“people their searches are not going to go forward if they don’t show the Provost that they tried,
that they did everything possible right to try to diversify their pool.” Dr. Cortez also believed that
“structurally, the involvement of the Provost is what really solidified the seriousness of the
work.” In reflecting about her involvement on the evidence team, Dr. Gomez said “I think now
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 105

that I am tenured, I might have more courage to speak up because these are important issues and
I think I learned that the leadership piece is extremely important. So knowing that the provost
and the president did support this process and back it up, I think that was important.”
Dr. Bush summarized how the Provost “has to be strong enough that if the guidelines
were not being met, she has to pull the search.”
But if the guidelines are not being met then [the provost] really needs to step in
and either correct them or stop the search. I think that was the clear message to
faculty. [Administrators] were serious. They were serious about it, you know, this
is not just a little passive phase to check off strategic goal but this is an important
change culturally that we are shifting, here at [Valley Oaks].
From a CHAT perspective, the provost was part of the community with the responsibility
(division of labor) to hold faculty search committees accountable to promote the evidence
team’s racial equity efforts. In addition to the implicit bias training and the provost’s
symbolic role, the evidence team changed the interview questions to meadiate the type of
conversations faculty search committees would have about faculty candidates.
Final Act: Equity-Minded Interview Questions. During the sixth meeting in October,
faculty were discussing how to implement equity-minded questions into their phone and campus
visit interviews. Faculty engaged in an activity where they had to develop an evaluation rubric
for equity-focused questions. In this meeting, CUE facilitators informed faculty that they could
use interview questions to assess faculty candidates’ skills to mentor racially minoritized
students. The activity required faculty to generate at least one question related to issues of equity,
diversity, and inclusion.
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After the activity, faculty (primarily search chairs who were not on the evidence team)
shared their concerns about their inability to integrate the university’s equity goals with
departmental goals. A white male tenured search chair said: “how someone, without the
expertise on equity, can develop such goals.” Moreover, he asked if “someone can develop the
equity questions for him.” Drs. Lauren Cortez, a Black female tenured professor, and Kevin
Boyer, a white male tenured professor, both agreed that “faculty chairs have never been
intentional about connecting questions to equity goals.” Dr. Adriana Patton, a white female pre-
tenured professor, proposed for the evidence team to “develop and provide structured questions
and goals for every search committee to use.” In response to Dr. Patton’s suggestion, Dr. Cortez
clarified that “implementing equity goals doesn’t only fall on equity advocates.” Following Dr.
Cortez’s comment, faculty moved into discussing how to assess faculty candidates’ responses to
equity questions.
Dr. Gloria Arce, a Latina pre-tenured professor, said that she would be “afraid of
speaking up in interviews about questions that others might perceive as being risky.” An Asian
male tenured professor, who was serving as a search chair, warned the evidence team to be
mindful that “junior candidates would respond differently than seasoned candidates because of
differences in experience.” According to this search chair, faculty search committees should
“edit equity questions.” Dr. Taylor Bush, a white female tenured professor, asked the search
chair “how would you assess the different answers?” At this moment, faculty participants also
wondered how to assess the different responses of faculty candidates. Then Dr. Eric Nuñez, a
Latino tenured professor, suggested that search committee members should focus on asking
“praxis based questions because they are more effective than theoretical questions.” By the end
of the conversation, the white male tenured professor who was serving as a search chair
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questioned the evidence team’s assumption that committee members could assess equity-minded
responses. The white male tenured professor said, “how should I know about culturally relevant
pedagogy when I am a [scientist]?” Ultimately, the evidence team proposed to create a shared
drive with “a set of questions that was universally applicable” and “a template everyone can
use,” according to Drs. Patton and Nuñez, respectively.
Even though the evidence team proposed to create a shared drive with equity-minded
questions and templates for search chairs to use, faculty search chairs raised similar concerns in
the last meeting in November. As a CUE researcher, in this meeting, I presented data from the
interviews I collected from racially minoritized professors working at VOU. A white male
tenured professor who was serving as a search chair had concerns about my interpretation of the
experiences of racially minoritized faculty with negative teaching evaluations. He contended that
white faculty also received negative teaching evaluations when they academically challenged
students. In response to her white colleague, Dr. Jenna Stevens, a white female tenured
professor, acknowledged that “students do give [white faculty] negative feedback if you criticize
them but who gets latitude to confront them and who doesn’t” was based on race. Dr. Cortez
elaborates Dr. Stevens’ comments “that the margin of error is smaller for faculty of color.”
Immediately after this conversation, the evidence team took a break before coming back
as a team and discuss how to review the applications of finalists. The discussions about white
faculty negatively evaluating racially minoritized faculty continued. Dr. Leslie Hurtado, a Latina
pre-tenured professor, said that the Faculty Search Guidelines should not allow “search
committees to evaluate finalist as incompetent because their competency would already have
been established in the previous rounds.” To this end, Dr. Hurtado shared that she created an
evaluation rubric to help her minimize implicit bias in addition to the implicit bias training.
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The participation of faculty search committee chairs who did not attend the February and
March meetings created challenges for faculty participants. White faculty search chairs vocally
and visibly expressed resistance to the evidence team’s use of their critical knowledge about the
culture of niceness in their decision-making. As illustrated by Dr. Hurtado’s actions, the agency
of evidence team members’ was to create language and practices that minimize implicit bias in
faculty hiring. Although faculty search chairs presented obstacles, the evidence team’s critical
knowledge of the culture of niceness informed their collective agency for racial equity in faculty
hiring.
Discussion
Based on a study of professors participating in an action research project and using
CHAT, this study aims to examine faculty agency for racial equity in faculty hiring. CHAT
postulates that learning happens with the introduction of new forms of mediation (Engeström,
2008). Professors used race-conscious language and tools (e.g., equity-mindedness, institutional
racism, data disaggregated by race) to interrogate their university’s historical and cultural
process of hiring faculty candidates. In this study, warm-up questions asking a group of
professors committed to racial equity and who had administrative support to interrogate taken-
for-granted norms in faculty life provided the professors with opportunities to talk about racism.
When the inquiry process revealed that white faculty and racially minoritized professors entered
the racial dialogue from different locations, study participants named and analyzed their
emotions and transformed them into knowledge to inform their practice. From a cultural-
historical activity perspective, this event exposed two interacting activities initiated by different
subjects (Yamagata-Lynch & Haudenschild, 2009). The activities consisted of one initiated by
white faculty and another initiated by racially minoritized professors. White faculty were
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negotiating their capacity to understand issues of racial equity and learning about their
colleagues’ experiences with racism. Racially minoritized professors were managing traumatic
emotions and sustaining the learning environment for their white colleagues. The contradiction
between the two activities presented an opportunity for evidence team members to identify a
common purpose of embedding equity in faculty hiring.
The finding described above contributes to the literature on action research to advance
racial equity (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Bragg & Durham, 2012; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015)
by emphasizing the role of professors’ personal and professional experiences in making sense of
artifacts. Traditionally, action research studies on racial equity focus on the mediating role of
artifacts in faculty learning without considering the role of personal and professional experiences
with racism (Bishop, 2014; Felix et al., 2015; Peña, 2012). From a critical race perspective,
researchers and practitioners should question who benefits from using artifacts to learn about
racial inequities. The findings show that white faculty gained the most in creating a sense of
purposeful agency while racially minoritized professors developed a sense of legitimacy, both
personally and professionally, to move forward with transformational change at a systemic level.
The combination of CHAT and faculty agency helped underscore the significance of
professors interrogating the campus culture that has not been examined in the literature on
faculty diversity (Gasman et al., 2011; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017; Smith et al., 2004). Faculty in
this study participated in a ten-month inquiry-based intervention to interrogate the culture of
niceness (rules) that historically constrained them from advancing racial equity. Through their
participation in the inquiry-based intervention, faculty agency involved questioning who had the
power to speak, based on social (e.g., race, gender) identities and professional (e.g., professional
rank) identities. The intentional effort to examine the university’s culture and to name policies
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and practices that contribute to racial inequity allowed the team to develop hopeful strategies as
part of the agentic perspectives to hire Black, Latinx, and Native American professors.
Consistent with research on CHAT (Engeström, 2008; Lee, 2011; Roth & Lee, 2007), faculty
agency for racial equity consisted of critical knowledge (i.e., agentic perspective) to question and
create (i.e., agentic action) new rules (e.g., implicit bias training), community (e.g., equity
advocates), and division of labor (e.g., provost can cancel searches) to change how faculty search
committees (e.g., subjects) would think and talk about racially minoritized applicants when
making hiring decisions (e.g., object).
In addition to faculty agency for racial equity involving disrupting the norms of the
culture of niceness, professors agreed to move from focusing on why racial equity was essential
to how they would embed racial equity in faculty hiring. This finding adds to the current
literature on faculty agency and racial equity by highlighting how pairing an equity-minded
framework with stories of racism facilitated policy changes designed to minimize discriminatory
practices in faculty hiring. Although the inquiry-based activity was not intended to share stories
about racism, the agency to interrogate systems of race brought to surface experiences with
racism. Although the sharing of stories with racism was taxing for racially minoritized faculty,
their value for learning and change were instructive for white faculty (Dowd, Liera, Elmore,
Castro, & Drivalas, 2017; Matias, 2014). With support from CUE facilitators, the agency of this
group of faculty involved recognizing their situated positions within a structure and culture that
discriminated against racially minoritized professors. In doing so, the space for race talk was not
centralized around defensive moves; instead, the team confronted racism and took action to
change the Faculty Search Guidelines. Future research should explore the emotional labor
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exerted by higher education practitioners (e.g., faculty, staff, and administrators) involved in
racial equity work.
Implications
The findings suggest that administrators and professors who seriously want to develop
agency for racial equity in faculty hiring would benefit from interrogating and disrupting faculty
cultures that perpetuate racial inequity in faculty hiring. Higher education leaders who endeavor
to take on such efforts should consider the time and commitment required in meaningful inquiry.
Administrators and professors also need to be aware of the dangers of using artifacts to disrupt
racial inequity without considering professors’ personal and professional experiences with
racism. Administrative leadership should validate and legitimize the experiences with racism of
racially minoritized professors who they ask to advance racial equity in faculty hiring. The
collaboration between professors with different social identities and professional identities
played a role to promote racial equity. For this reason, administrative leaders should identify
white faculty who are committed and ready to question and acknowledge how their practices
may be implicated in perpetuating racial inequity in faculty hiring.
Administrators and professors should be aware that the emotions of anger and sadness
white professors experience while engaged in racial equity work are not the same type of anger
and sadness racially minoritized professors experienced. White faculty in this study felt angry
and sad because they were making sense of their racialized identities while racially minoritized
faculty were angry and sad from the historical legacy of discrimination they have endured.
Administrators should assume that racial equity work is a racialized process which requires
experts, whether internal or external to the university, to guide the group of faculty to ask
questions such as “who feels safe?” and “what kind of place are racially minoritized professors
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coming into?” For this reason, faculty invested in racial equity should develop the capacity to use
race-conscious and equity-minded artifacts to interrogate their campus culture and structures.
Lastly, colleges and universities interested in promoting racial equity in faculty hiring
may face pushback from conservative lawmakers, administrators, and faculty who push the
culture of niceness as a societal value. The findings illustrate the challenges for professors to
develop a coherent plan when faculty participants were angry, sad, and frustrated. Administrators
should understand that challenges to embedding equity do not only manifest in bureaucracy, but
they are also about intellectual and emotional growth. There should be a collective effort
between the administration and faculty to create and sustain an environment where racial equity
is the motive of activities. Since this study was designed as a narrative inquiry of professors
advancing racial equity, future research should consider interviewing faculty who may not be on-
board with racial equity. The observation and interview data also outlined the challenges faculty
participants had with faculty colleagues who questioned their efforts to advance racial equity.
Concluding Remarks
Interrogating systems of power, in this case, faculty culture, surfaced emotional responses
to racism. From a cultural historical activity theory perspective, the findings revealed at least two
different activity systems of faculty agency for racial equity. Professors’ social location shaped
how faculty entered conversations about racism and how they made sense of their agency for
racial equity. Unlike chapter two, the observation data provided a window of opportunity to
document how faculty developed a sense of collective agency when they decided to move from
how to why rationales for their equity efforts. The seventeen professors on the evidence team
encountered challenges from faculty who were not part of the first two emotional intense
meetings.
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In the next chapter, I collected data from evidence team members who participated on
faculty search committees to implement racial equity. Chapter four advances the limitations of
chapter three by exploring how professors advance racial equity in spaces where they have to
interact with faculty colleagues who are unaware and resistant to racial equity. I applied
intersectionality to investigate the role of professors’ social location further to advance racial
equity.

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Chapter 4: Professors as Equity Advocates on Faculty Search Committees
Racial inequity in faculty hiring continues to be a persistent problem in higher education.
The number of racially minoritized faculty has steadily increased in the past 20 years (Martinez,
Chang, & Welton, 2017); however, Black, Latinx, and Native American people only account for
about 14% of assistant professors, 11% of associate professors, and 7% of full professors
(NCES, 2016). Existing research suggests that faculty search committees pose barriers to racially
diversifying the faculty. First, although the composition of hiring committees vary by
institutional type (e.g., two-year, four-year), they primarily consist of disciplinary experts
presumed to be objective and neutral (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). Professors rely heavily on
numbers and rankings as “objective” criteria to evaluate candidate qualifications (Sensoy &
DiAngelo, 2017; Tuitt, Danowitz-Sagaria, & Turner, 2007; Ware, 2000); however, these
standards are not objective (Rivera, 2017). Faculty positively evaluate applications that closely
resemble their work or social identities (Posselt, 2016; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017; Turner, 2002;
Villalpando & Delgado-Bernal, 2002; Ware, 2000). For example, disciplinary experts are
necessary to assess faculty candidates’ expertise, yet such evaluations are often a reflection of
preference and bias than objective evaluations (Fujimoto, 2012; Posselt, 2016; Rivera, 2017).
Furthermore, there are no set criteria to identify the desired characteristics and qualifications of a
faculty candidate (Meizlish & Kaplan, 2008; Rivera, 2017; Tomlinson & Freeman, 2017);
instead faculty search committee members rely on university and departmental missions
(Meizlish & Kaplan, 2008; Twombly, 2005) and their social networks (DiRamio, Theroux, &
Guarino, 2009) to make hiring decisions.
Over the last 20 years, researchers have reiterated the need for faculty to create more
intentional criteria to interrupt the standard procedures and mindsets that reproduce
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predominantly white faculty bodies (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017; Smith, Turner, Osei-Kofi, &
Richards, 2004; Turner, 2000); the mechanisms that inform faculty judgment and decision-
making (Fraser & Hunt, 2011; Sheridan, Fine, Pribbenow, Handelsman, & Carnes, 2010; Sensoy
& DiAngelo, 2017; Smith et al., 2004; Tuitt, Sagaria, & Turner, 2007; Turner, 2002); and the
sociocultural norms and rules that guide search committee members’ behaviors, cognitions, and
emotions in decision-making (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017; Villalpando & Delgado-Bernal, 2002;
Ware, 2000). Such recommendations include using specific and targeted language to signal
interest in hiring racially minoritized professors (Smith et al., 2004; Turner, 2002), actively
recruiting racially minoritized faculty (Gasman, Kim, & Nguyen, 2011; Phillips, 2004), and
employing cluster hires (Kelly, Gayles, & Williams, 2017; Muñoz et al., 2017).
Professors are in a position to help higher education institutions address racial equity in
faculty hiring because of their autonomy, independence, and longevity working at the same
institution (Bensimon, 2007; Bragg, McCambly, & Durham, 2016). Although there is no agreed-
upon definition, racial equity requires faculty to be race-conscious if they want to achieve parity
in faculty representation and outcomes by race. For faculty to advance racial equity, they need to
be comfortable addressing how racism affects racially minoritized groups on campus (Dowd &
Bensimon, 2015). Inquiry-based interventions provide professors opportunities to shift their
thinking and practice to serve racially minoritized students better (Felix, Bensimon, Hanson,
Gray, & Klingsmith, 2015; Peña, 2012). Inquiry is a process requiring practitioners to use
institutional data to produce critical knowledge about local problems and to develop the expertise
to change institutional structures (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Reason, 1994). Inquiry-based
interventions that require faculty to use tools (e.g., data disaggregated by race, race-specific
language) to identify problems and develop strategies to advance racial equity primarily focus on
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how tools mediate learning (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015; Felix et al.,
2015; Peña, 2012). One such intervention was studied by Ching (2018) where faculty analyzed
their course syllabi which helped them reflect on their mindsets and practices in the classroom.
She found that faculty have different conceptions and commitments to equity that may explain
differences in learning how to address racial equity. Moreover, the social context for learning, in
this case, inquiry-based interventions, “matters not only for what is said, but who is relaying the
message and whether that individual is perceived as credible” (Ching, 2018, p. 416). However,
professors advancing racial equity as members of faculty search committees are in spaces where
their faculty colleagues may or may not view their efforts to promote racial equity as credible.
The purpose of this study is to explore how faculty implement recruitment strategies,
write job announcements, and device evaluation criteria (e.g., interview questions) to decide
among (e.g., can faculty candidates mentor Black and Latinx students) criteria to hire racially
minoritized professors. This study examines the experience of 10 professors on faculty search
committees at a private and religiously-affiliated university where leadership invested monetary
resources for training on racial equity with the goal of changing the culture around faculty hiring.
Unlike previous studies on faculty search committees, this study pulls back the curtain on faculty
hiring presenting observation data on faculty search committees and interviews examining how
these professors advanced racial equity in faculty hiring. Professors in this study participated on
faculty search committees with the intention to implement a more equitable and racially
conscious hiring process. This study sought to answer the following research questions:
1. What are the experiences of professors advancing racial equity in faculty search
committees?
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2. How do professors implement equitable practices during faculty search committee
meetings?
3. What challenges do professors encounter when advancing racial equity in faculty search
committees? How do professors overcome challenges to advance racial equity?
The literature on professors and racial equity primarily focuses on faculty learning within
inquiry-based interventions. By exploring the actions of racial equity advocates on faculty search
committees, this study adds to the literature on racial equity, which is typically carried out by
specially formed working groups. Informed by literature on faculty agency and a conceptual
framework that draws on critical, sociocultural, and organizational theories, I show that faculty
agency for racial equity in faculty hiring is fostered by successful and unsuccessful attempts at
negotiating and resisting social and professional differences with the intention to transform
systems of power. Faculty agency is the ability to construct one’s context for learning and
development in professional and intellectual ways (O’Meara, Terosky, & Neumann, 2008).
Understanding the experiences of professors responsible for changing the systems of power that
determine the conditions and criteria of membership into the professoriate can help universities
and departments increase the racial diversity of the professoriate. I conclude with guidance for
faculty who seek to change faculty hiring to be more equitable and inclusive of racially
minoritized groups. The practical implications of this study can inform the design of faculty
search committees to advance racial equity.
Literature Review: Faculty Agency and Social Location to Advance Racial Equity
The literature on faculty agency draws on the understanding that agency and structure are
in a dialectical relationship (Delgado-Bernal, Burciaga, & Caromona, 2012; Ford, 2011; Sulé,
2014). Although professors are embedded in structures, they have the potential to act as agents
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within and against the context of cultural and structural pressures (Gonzales, 2014; Sulé, 2014).
For example, agentic perspectives and agentic actions are two separate, but related components
of faculty agency (Campbell & O’Meara, 2014). Professors who perceive fitting in their
department, working in a positive work-life climate, and having professional development
resources report higher levels of agentic actions (e.g., publishing, collaborating) to advance their
careers (Campbell & O’Meara, 2014; O’Meara, Rivera, Kuvaeva, & Corrigan, 2015). Also,
professors’ personal and professional experiences inform how they make sense of their
environments and their perceptions of the available choices to take action (Gonzales, 2014; 2018;
Sulé, 2014). Although informative to consider how faculty agency consists of perspectives and
actions, critical approaches advance this approach by emphasizing the interaction between
professors’ social location and structure.
Faculty Agency from a Critical Perspective
Critical race theorists have challenged ahistoricism by linking the convergence of race,
property, and oppression with the formation of U.S. higher education. Historically, the
professoriate was created and maintained by an all-white male faculty body (Patton, 2016;
Museus, Ledesma, & Parker, 2015; Wilder, 2013; Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). For example,
white religious males were tutors paid to teach white male students from the wealthiest families
(Gonzales, 2018; Museus et al., 2015). Over time, faculty distinguished the professoriate by
defining the type of work valued and the evaluation of said work (Gonzales, 2018; Rhoades,
2015). Although the range of prevailing epistemologies, theories, and methods vary by academic
discipline (Lamont, 2009; Posselt, 2016), those promoted and rewarded have been rooted in
white, male, and Western norms (Delgado-Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; Gonzales, 2018; Patton,
2016; Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). For these reasons, the different and interrelated identities of
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racially minoritized professors place them in the boundaries of different worlds (Delgado-Bernal
et al., 2012; Ford, 2011; Quaye, Shaw, & Hill, 2017; Sulé, 2014).
The boundaries of the professoriate were established and maintained by what Zuberi and
Bonilla-Silva (2008) described as “white logic,” which refers “to a context in which White
supremacy has defined the techniques and processes of reasoning about social facts” and
“assumes a historical posture that grants eternal objectivity to the views of elite Whites…and
grants centrality to the knowledge, history, science, and culture of elite White men.” In this view,
other racial groups are people “with folklore” but not “knowledge, history, science, [and]
culture” (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008, p. 17). In the professoriate, white logic devalues the
research interests, theoretical frameworks, and approaches of racially minoritized professors
(Turner et al., 2008). In characterizing what is and is not legitimate, white logic creates
boundaries that reproduce inequities and establishes grounds of exclusion based on social (e.g.,
race, gender) and professional (e.g., tenure, discipline) identities.
In light of these boundaries, faculty seeking to subvert white logic must engage in
“boundary work,” which refers to the strategies people use to draw lines of similarity and
difference across contexts and types of groups (Lamont & Molnar, 2002; Posselt, Reyes, Slay,
Kamimura, & Porter, 2017; Tilly, 2004). As faculty, racially minoritized individuals have an
insider status in academia, but the combination of their minoritized identities (e.g., race, gender,
sexuality) places them as outsiders within academia. The social location of professors with
minoritized identities (e.g., race, gender, sexuality) is situated between different worlds.
Professors perform boundary work when they subvert, push on, and mind professional and
disciplinary boundaries rooted in white, male, Western norms (Gonzales, 2018). The boundaries
racially minoritized professors face are related to converging identities (Delgado-Bernal et al.,
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2012; Ford, 2011; Gonzales, 2018; Sulé, 2014). Racially minoritized professors can enact their
agency to replicate norms of the professoriate that accrue rewards (e.g., publishing in top-tier
journals) while challenging aspects of the profession that disaffirm their social identities by
doing interdisciplinary work, prioritizing practice, and deploying their subjectivities in their
scholarship (Ford, 2011; Gonzales, 2018; Sulé, 2014). This critical approach of faculty agency
helps conceptualize faculty agency for racial equity to be between the boundaries of equity work
and traditional forms of faculty work.
Faculty Agency for Racial Equity as a Dialectic Interaction
Most research on faculty agency focuses on career advancement (Campbell & O’Meara,
2014; Gonzales, 2018; O’Meara, 2015) and experiences with racist environments (Sulé, 2014).
Within this body of literature, faculty agency has been conceptualized to change from context to
context. For example, professors may feel more agentic to alter their advising practices to be
more equitable in comparison to advancing racial equity in faculty search committees. However,
few studies have examined faculty agency for racial equity (Bishop, 2014; Felix et al., 2015). In
the context of organizational change, Battilana (2006) argued that individuals’ social position
within an organization influences their perceptions of the environment, which in turn shapes their
actions in developing alternative rules and practices. Battilana (2006) acknowledged that
individuals who are willing and can change practices are not always successful in
institutionalizing them. Focusing on social location allows researchers to identify the conditions
that support individuals to institutionalize divergent practices (Battilana, 2006; Seo & Creed,
2002).
In reality, the necessary conditions to transform structures are not always in place for
professors to change or create new practices and policies. Faculty hiring is an institutionalized
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process which requires additional efforts from professors to identify and change the taken-for-
granted norms and practices. Conceptualizing faculty agency as a dialectic interaction between
social location and structure allows researchers to understand why professors reproduce,
negotiate, and transform structures to advance racial equity. As seen in Figure 4.1., professors’
social location, or the groups they belong to because of their place in history and society, is
consistently interacting with structure. The choices for faculty to implement racial equity
(depicted by the birectional arrow at the bottom of Figure 4.1.) depends on the systems of power
that assign a value to professors’ social location. Although professors may aspire to transform
structures (e.g., creating new policies and practices to advance racial equity), their social location
in faculty search committees may only provide them opportunities to embed racial equity
through reproducing (e.g., using existing policies and practices to advance racial equity) or
negotiating (e.g., modifying or changing existing policies and practices) structures. To advance
this approach on faculty agency for racial equity, I developed a conceptual framework to
investigate how the social location of professors shapes their actions to implement racial equity
into faculty hiring.
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Figure 4.1. Faculty Agency for Racial Equity as Influenced by Social Location.
Conceptual Framework
I constructed a conceptual framework that allows me to focus on the sociocultural and
historical aspects of faculty search committees, analyze faculty search committees as a unit of
analysis, and take into consideration the ways converging identities intersect with the production
of power. Bringing together the theories of boundary work, activity systems, and
intersectionality allows one to focus on faculty learning to address issues of racial inequity. In
what follows, I outline the ways boundary work, activity systems, and intersectionality
theoretically complements each other.
Faculty Search Committees as Activity Systems
It is helpful to characterize faculty search committees as activity systems to understand
faculty agency for racial equity as boundary work because such a conceptualization highlights
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how the typical activity system of faculty hiring constructs boundaries that inhibit faculty agency
for racial equity. Consistent with cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), which can be traced
to the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, I identified faculty search committees as activity
systems that can be “characterized as collective, tool-mediated, and objective-oriented”
(Schenke, Van Driel, Geijsel, & Volman, 2018, p. 3). Individuals work with the tools that have
been culturally and historically developed within activity systems to achieve the objective of that
activity system (Engeström, 2008; Lee, 2011; Roth & Lee, 2007).

Figure 4.2. Search Committee as an Activity System.
Participants in an activity system are members of faculty search committees where
cultural and historical processes mediate their interactions and learning about faculty hiring (see
Figure 4.2.). According to CHAT, members (“subjects”) of the same activity system share
motives (“object”) (Engeström, 2008). The object of faculty search committee members, which
is mediated by their disciplinary cultures, is to hire the most qualified faculty applicant. Artifacts,
rules, division of labor, and community are the social and cultural processes that mediate the
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relationship between subject and object (Engeström, 2008; Lee, 2011; Roth & Lee, 2007).
Faculty search committee members’ artifacts consist of job announcements, evaluation rubrics,
and research and teaching presentations. Their rules, both spoken and unspoken, include ranking
applicants, definitions of excellence and merit, open and fair conversations, and homophily. The
division of labor depends on the composition of the committee (“community”). Department
chairs appoint a faculty colleague as chair who then helps to identify other members and delegate
tasks throughout the process (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). Faculty search committees consist of a
search chair, departmental colleagues, and a colleague from another discipline.
Inner contradictions. As members of a faculty search committee, professors who want
to advance racial equity share a similar motive with their faculty colleagues about hiring the
most qualified applicant who will help advance the department. However, committee members—
both internal and external to the department—who want to advance racial equity bring and use
artifacts from a different activity system that challenge the rules, division of labor, and
community of the initial activity system (see Figure 4.3.). Inner contradictions occur when new
mediating factors (e.g., language affirming race) are introduced into a culturally and historically
constructed activity system (Engeström, 2008). Inner contradictions create cognitive and
emotional dissonance which motivate participants to take actions to resolve tensions. When
subjects with diverse professional (e.g., professional rank, disciplinary expertise) and social
identities (e.g., race, gender) collaborate to address a common problem, their situated positions
within the structure they want to change can create inner contradictions in the activity system.
CHAT is useful for analyzing individuals’ interactions with their context, but concerning social
location, it offers few analytical tools to conceptualize further how multiple systems intersect to
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shape experiences within activity systems. I use an intersectionality framework to examine how
converging identities contribute to the experience of professors advancing racial equity.

Figure 4.3. Interacting Activity Systems.
The Convergence of Systems of Power and Faculty Agency for Racial Equity
Intersectionality is historically rooted in social movement activism and institutional
incorporation in the academy (Collins & Bilge, 2016). According to Collins (1990), each person
is a member of multiple dominant and subordinate groups. A racially minoritized professor could
be a member of a dominant group because of his or her professional status, yet is a member of
subordinate groups (e.g., race, gender, sexuality). White faculty also hold multiple group
memberships. In particular, white professors who want to advance racial equity might experience
challenges because equity work may not align with normative forms of faculty work. An
intersectionality framework focuses on power dynamics enacted through social structures and
cultural representations (Collins, 2015; Crenshaw, 1991). The application of intersectionality to
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study faculty agency for racial equity examines how the interlocking relationships between
structures of domination and marginalization (e.g., race, gender, and professional rank) converge
to shape the experiences of professors advancing racial equity in faculty hiring (Museus &
Griffin, 2011; Nuñez, 2014).
The introduction of new mediating factors into activity systems bring to surface the social
location of subjects that underlie the intersecting systems of power. An intersectionality
framework allows a focus on the unique experiences of professors with multiple social and
professional identities in a highly-contested activity system. For example, a Latina tenured
professor in a male-dominated field might experience and respond to resistance differently than a
Latina pre-tenured professor in a similar field. Each of the Latina’s experiences will vary
throughout the hiring process depending on the topic at hand and who says what during
conversations. When discussions move into hiring decisions, tenured status might play a more
significant role in each of the Latina faculty member’s choices to advocate for more transparent
and equitable practices. Based on the conceptual framework I described in this section, how
professors enact their agency for racial equity will depend on their social location within the
activity system of faculty search committees.
Methodology
The research design is a narrative inquiry of professors advancing racial equity in faculty
hiring. Professors in this study served as racial equity advocates on faculty search committees to
help organize and create an equitable hiring process. Narrative inquiry is an appropriate approach
because the focus is on how professors made sense of their experiences interacting with their
context to advance racial equity in faculty search committees (Daiute, 2014; Souto-Manning,
2014). In line with the conceptual underpinnings reviewed in this study—faculty agency,
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boundary work, CHAT, and intersectionality—narrative inquiry allows me to connect
professors’ social location with the activity system of faculty search committees. This article
reflects findings from extended fieldwork I conducted from October 2016 to April 2017. In this
section, I describe the case study setting, the sampling, the data collection, the analysis design,
and the limitations of the study.
Study Setting: Valley Oaks University’s Racial Equity Efforts
Valley Oaks University (pseudonym), located in California, is a religiously-affiliated
private liberal arts university with a total enrollment of about 5,000 undergraduate students. In
2016, Valley Oaks University (VOU) became a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), a federal
designation for accredited universities with an undergraduate population that is at least 25
percent Latinx students, with a significant proportion of them being low-income and first-
generation college students (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). VOU’s changing student
demographics reignited interest in a diversified faculty, but efforts to recruit professors reflective
of the growing student diversity fell short. At the time of the study, VOU’s undergraduate
students were 58 percent white, 27 percent Latinx, 4 percent Black, 6 percent Asian-American,
and 5 percent multiracial. As seen in Table 4.1., from the 2013-2014 academic year to the 2015-
2016 academic year, there were a total of nine racially minoritized professors hired from the 23
available positions. As of 2014, there were 11 Asian-American, 4 Black, and 7 Latinx professors
working at VOU with 34% and 30% of them represented in the social sciences and humanities,
respectively. Also, the university’s accreditation agency described the culture of faculty hiring as
suffering from “paralysis and lack of clarity about how to define the goals, how to measure
success, how to support and understand the experiences of diverse faculty.”

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 128

Table 4.1.

Faculty Hiring Outcomes from 2013-2014 to 2016-2017

Race 2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016 2016-2017 Total
Asian 0 0 1 3 4
Black 0 2 0 2 2
Latinx 1 0 5 1 7
White 7 6 1 3 17
Did Not Disclose 0 0 1 0 1

VOU was an appropriate site to study because administrators, with the support of faculty
who were advancing racial equity at a smaller-scale, invested resources in training seventeen
professors in a ten-month intervention created and facilitated by the Center for Urban Education
(CUE) to racially diversify the faculty body. As seen in Table 4.2., seventeen faculty from
disciplines in applied fields, humanities, sciences, and social sciences participated in seven CUE
developed professional development workshops, called evidence team meetings, over the course
of 10 months. As I describe in the following section, this study focused on the experiences of
equity advocates serving on faculty search committees.
Table 4.2.

Characteristics of Equity Advocates

Pseudonym Race Gender Tenured Discipline
Lauren Cortez* Black Female Yes Humanities
Kevin Boyer* White Male Yes Humanities
Jenna Stevens White Female Yes Sciences
Federick Green Asian Male No Humanities
Paul Danielson White Male Yes Graduate Studies
Scott Jones* White Male No Sciences
Jason Wright* White Male No Humanities
James Ward White Male Yes Graduate Studies
Leslie Hurtado+ Latina Female No Applied Field
Adriana Patton White Female No Humanities
Donna Evens* White Female Yes Social Sciences
Rebecca Briggs+ White Female No Applied Field
Taylor Bush*+ White Female Yes Sciences
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 129

Gloria Arce Latina Female No Graduate Studies
Susana Gomez Latina Female No Graduate Studies
Brian Cook* Black Male Yes Social Sciences
Eric Nuñez*+ Latino Male Yes Social Sciences
Note. *Faculty interviewed. +Faculty observed.

The partnership with CUE helped equity advocates identify three primary areas of
concern: (1) search committees do not actively recruit racially minoritized professors; (2)
implicit and explicit biases may influence evaluations of Black, Latinx, Native American, and
other racially marginalized professors; and (3) racially minoritized faculty experience an
unwelcoming campus culture. To address these issues, the faculty on the evidence team made the
following changes to their Faculty Search Guidelines: (1) all search committee members must
take an implicit bias training; (2) each search committee will include two trained faculty
members in racial equity; and (3) the Dean and Provost reserve the right to cancel a search that
does not include racially minoritized candidates as semi-finalists and/or finalists.
Positionality
Critical approaches encourage researchers to describe their positionality in research to
illustrate how the writer is always entangled with the work. Thus, before moving into the
specifics of the data, I describe a brief positionality statement. As a CUE researcher, I attended
the evidence team meetings from February 2016 to November 2016. I developed a rapport with
the majority of equity advocates, including the provost, throughout my involvement as a CUE
researcher (see Chapter 3 for more information). As a result of my participation as an action
researcher, I was granted access to two faculty search committees to observe the hiring process.
In addition to my affiliation with CUE, my identity as a Latino male doctoral candidate who
aspires to become a professor shaped my interactions with equity advocates. I consistently
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 130

thought about and wrote about how my identity as a Latino male informed my interactions with
faculty participants during data collection and data
5
analysis.
Sampling
VOU was an exemplary case study because of the equity advocates on faculty search
committees. The equity advocates involvement on faculty search committees provided a window
into how they advanced racial equity in faculty hiring to be inclusive of Black, Latinx, and
Native American professors. Also, VOU’s identity as a religiously-affiliated institution and focus
on teaching shaped how equity advocates addressed racial equity. As seen in Table 4.2., ten out
of the seventeen equity advocates participated in this study, including two Black professors, two
Latinx professors, and six white professors. Drs. Rebecca Briggs, Leslie Hurtado, and Taylor
Bush (all names are pseudonyms) served as equity advocates on the applied field faculty search
committee, while Drs. Eric Nuñez and Taylor Bush (search chair) were on the STEM hiring
committee that I observed. Drs. Cook and Evans were equity advocates on a social science
faculty search committee and Drs. Lauren Cortez and Jason Wright on a humanities committee.
Dr. Kevin Boyer was an equity advocate on a STEM committee, and Dr. Scott Jones was on an
applied field committee. I interviewed eight of the ten professors including one Latinx professor,
two Black professors, and five white professors.
Equity advocate role. Throughout the ten-month intervention, faculty participants
created the role of the equity advocate. According to faculty participants, the primary
responsibility of being an equity advocate was to help faculty search committees learn to be
equity-minded (e.g., race-consciousness, institutional racism, data disaggregated by race). Equity
advocates assisted faculty search committees with implementing the Faculty Search Guidelines

5
See Appendix K for recruitment email and Appendix L for information sheet
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 131

and facilitated conversations about race and equity. For example, equity advocates provided the
language for faculty search committees to highlight the university’s HSI designation and
strategies to build a racially diverse hiring pool. Dr. Eric Nuñez, a Latino tenured professor, said
that part of his responsibility was to help “this department come up with the best candidate for
their needs and the university's needs.” While Dr. Kevin Boyer, a white male tenured professor,
said equity advocates ensured faculty search committees followed the new Faculty Search
Guidelines by “talk[ing] about [equity] as an institutional priority and as part of the strategic
plan.” He further emphasized that equity advocates talked about equity “as a directive from
academic affairs. But also, not just bureaucratic stuff. In the ways that can be helpful to talk
about the rationale behind it as well.” I observed Professor Nuñez tell a faculty search committee
that if they “could not bring themselves to hire a [racially minoritized professor], then they
should at least consider how a white candidate will mentor [Black and Latinx] students.”
Data Collection
6

My focus in this study was to investigate the experiences of equity advocates advancing
racial equity as members of faculty search committees. This included their reflections
(interviews), interactions with faculty search committee members (observations), and how their
multiple professional and social identities shaped and were shaped by the activity system of
faculty search committees (interviews and observations).
Observations. During the 2016-2017 academic year, there were 13 faculty search
searches in the applied fields, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. As seen in Table 4.1., six
of the positions were filled by Asian, Black, or Latinx professors including one Latino male, one
Black male, one Black female, and three Asian males (one Asian-American and two

6
See Appendix M for information on how theory informed data collection
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 132

international scholars). Two faculty search committees hired white females, and three hired
white males. There were two failed searches because of rejected offers from a Latino and Asian
males.
From October 2016 to April 2017, I observed two faculty search committees for a total of
40 hours (see Appendix N for more information). Although the faculty search committee
meetings were the primary source of observation data for this study, I also observed two training
sessions equity advocates organized and one meeting where the Provost went over the new
Faculty Search Guidelines with the faculty search committees. The observation protocol focused
on faculty interactions with search chairs, search committee members, and hiring artifacts (e.g.,
recruitment strategies, evaluation criteria) (see Appendix O for observation protocol). I
composed field notes and reflective memos about the interactions, conflicts, engagement with
activities, as well as reactions to implementing the Faculty Search Guidelines.
To protect participant confidentiality, I do not disclose the specific disciplinary homes of
the faculty search committees nor do I describe their context in great detail. Instead, I refer to
their locations in two broad academic fields: applied field and Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). In comparison to their overall representation in the
professoriate, racially minoritized professors are underrepresented in STEM fields, while their
representation in applied fields aligns with patterns in Ph.D. production. In this study, both
disciplinary fields used quantitative metrics to evaluate excellence and merit.
Interviews. I interviewed seven out of the ten equity advocates I observed on faculty
search committees. Each interview lasted about sixty minutes, and all interviews were recorded
and professionally transcribed. The interview protocol captured faculty experiences as equity
advocates, their relationships with faculty search committee members (i.e., search chairs,
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 133

committee members, and equity advocates), and strategies and challenges to implementing the
new Faculty Search Guidelines (see Appendix P for interview protocol).
Documents. I also collected documents such as VOU’s hiring policy, job
announcements, evaluation rubrics, phone interview and campus visit protocols, and email
exchanges. The email exchanges included meeting notes, follow-up conversations among search
committee members and insights from equity advocates about their experiences. Overall,
observation data was used to investigate equity advocates’ actions to institutionalize equitable
practices, while the interviews were designed to understand equity advocate experiences on
faculty search committees. Documents were collected and analyzed to track the changes faculty
search committees made throughout the hiring process.
Analytical Process for Observation Data
I used NVivo 11 for the ongoing composition of memos, coding, and analysis. There
were three phases of analyses for the observation data. The early stages of data analyses were
inductive, driven by the research questions, and proceeded in four phases. First, I applied an
open coding approach to identify any unit of data that might be relevant to the study (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). I then used “versus” coding to look for patterns of “social domination, hierarchy,
and social privilege” (Saldaña, 2013, p. 116). In the second phase, I used axial coding to move
from codes to categories (Merriam & Tsidell, 2016). My focus at this stage was to identify
relationships among the categories. The third phase consisted of theoretical coding, which
allowed the analytical story to move in a theoretical direction (Saldaña, 2013). At this stage, I
revisited my analytical memos and conceptual framework to develop themes about the
experiences of equity advocates (see Appendix Q for coding examples).

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 134

Analytical Process for Interview Data
I employed narrative inquiry to analyze the interview data because it focuses on how
people use stories as tools to make sense of their experiences and actions (Daiute, 2014). Since
people use plots to reconstruct experiences, I used plot analysis to identify the structure of the
stories equity advocates shared with me about advancing racial equity on faculty search
committees (Daiute, 2014). Moreover, by obtaining narratives of what happened, who was
involved, and how participants reacted to those encounters, I unpacked the sequence of past
events and anticipated future actions through the experiences that stood out in their recollections
(Daiute, 2014). First, I set out to understand the broader narrative within each interview by
breaking it down into parts and seeing how they relate to each other (Polkinghorne, 1995). I read
and listened to each transcript multiple times to identify passages that I perceived as the
beginning, middle, and ending of plots, or stories conveyed in the larger narrative.
In the second phase, I used plot analysis to identify sections in each interview transcript
where faculty spoke of events and actions associated with advancing racial equity in faculty
hiring and the challenges they encountered. Plot analysis identifies the basic structure of
narratives to compare and consider how narrator’s are using plot elements (e.g., initiating
actions, complicating actions, high points, resolution strategies, codas, and endings) to make
sense of their experiences (Daiute, 2014). I identified 6 to 22 plots for each faculty participant,
for a total of 100 plots across all interview transcripts (see Appendix R for plot example). As I
identified plot elements, I applied a code that summarized the meaning of each complicating
action, high point, and resolution strategy to highlight the issues they faced during faculty search
committee meetings and how they resolved them in the narrative. The most commonly occurring
themes concerning issues were “power dynamics,” “pool size,” and “disciplinary expertise vs.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 135

equity expertise” (see Table 4.3. for example). The most commonly occurring resolution
strategies revolved around “evaluating for capacity and experience with race and equity,”
“calling out biases,” and “active and targeted recruitment” (see Table 4.3. for example). I
organized the 100 plots into similarly structured plots which produced 11 different types of
narratives. The most common plots were about targeted recruitment (n = 13), responsibilities as
an equity advocate (n = 12), evaluation rubrics (n = 11), and emotional reactions to challenges (n
= 11).
In the third phase, I used script analysis to identify common structures across the 11 plot
narratives. Script analysis is a technique to group plots with similar structures of complicating
actions, high points, and resolution strategies into larger stories (Daiute, 2014). For example, I
identified the combined plot-logic organizing plots about “Equity Advocate as an Official Role,”
Responsibilities as an Equity Advocate,” “Equity Advocate Pick and Roll,” and “Self-
Reflection” to gain insight into how equity advocates advanced racial equity. Script analysis
allowed me to understand how each equity advocate interacted with activity systems of faculty
search committees to implement racial equity into faculty hiring. At this stage, I triangulated the
interview data with observation and document data with the intention to find confirming and
disconfirming data across the different forms of data. I cross-referenced each script with the
themes from the observations to complement the findings with events and interactions during
faculty search committee meetings. To move my analysis beyond description, in the final stage, I
used my conceptual framework to inform the analytic questions I used to “guide [me] to search
directly for responses to research questions while being flexible to relevant content and
contextual information (Neumann & Pallas, 2015, p. 157). For example, I asked, “What is the
interaction between equity advocates’ social location and the activity system of faculty search
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 136

committees?” “In what ways does the data differentiate the experiences of equity advocates? Are
there differences between activity systems? Are there differences between social location?” and
“How did equity advocates interact with the mediating factors of the faculty search committee to
advance racial equity?” Did the data differentiate across activity systems? Did the data illustrate
similarities across activity systems?” Through these steps, I produced findings that illustrated the
experiences of equity advocates advancing racial equity including perspectives, strategies, and
challenges.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 137

Table 4.3.

Examples of Codes for Plot Elements

Code Code Description Code Example
High
point—
Power
dynamics
This code is about the power dynamics, such as
being silenced or facing challenges, because of
the equity advocates professional status, gender,
or race.
So it was like, who's in charge, you know, kind of thing. Because, you
know, the committee doesn't care who answers. It's just like, who knows.
Who has the information? So that was a little thing that we kind of
negotiating with

Yes, that's one factor that we should consider, and there's many other
factors. I had to have that conversation with this Caucasian, senior,
tenured professor, of which, I was still junior faculty. That was a hard
conversation to have that you just can't treat all students the same

I just kind of said, well, I'm surprised that I was led to believe in her
evaluations were really, really good. I still said it before I left, she’s still
my favorite candidate and she’s my top one candidate
High
point—
Pool size
This code is about issues with the hiring pool
being small or not racially and ethnically
diverse.
If we'd had an applicant pool that small in my department, it would have
been a failed search, and we'd have started again. I guess there's different
norms. I think the dean knew that it was a small applicant pool, so they
decided to go forward with it anyway, so that was kind of odd. It was not
a super diverse pool

They're like, "Where did you find that out?" And I said, "Well actually I
went online." I called a friend of mine who's a choir conductor who's also
African American, and she said, "Here's this group, we would love to
hear about this job"

At that point, you need to rally a search committee to do all the foot work
to make this big, diverse pool. Over the summer everyone's gone, you
can't do it
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 138

Resolution
strategy—
Calling out
bias
This code is about equity advocates relying on
their training or their personal experiences to
bring into questions incidents of biases, both
implicit and explicit, during the hiring process.
And make sure that people are the search committee are kind of aware
and keep them, I hate to use the word feet to the fire, but making sure that
we got to do this stuff, folks. We got to do it because it adds up, it could
be one little thing that may be your best chance to get a person of color in
here

To be honest, I responded directly and said, "That sounds like you're
discriminating based on age"

Having had that training myself I was able to very quickly identify those
implicit biases, but I think a lot of the other people, even though they say
through the implicit bias training, didn't see those biases in themselves
Resolution
strategy—
Active and
targeted
recruitment
This code is about equity advocates taking the
initiative to use strategies to recruit candidates of
color.
Some of it was about strategies, how can we build a pool, what can we do
to build it? Some of it was how can we keep people in the pool when
there was gonna be a ... When the perception was gonna be that there
would be a concerted effort to knock people out of the pool

And what ended up happening was we got a really diverse pool, you
know. So, they saw I think the results of the fact that we took a little
more care at the beginning. We front-ended some of the research instead
of just hoping for the best

So, they knew target, those programs, just because of the number of
students. But then also, we suggested, what about, even though HBCUs
might not have often have that Ph.D. program in music, a lot of them do
have masters programs. So you could still contact those departments,
because they know where their students go
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 139

Limitations
A limitation of this study was not capturing the voices of faculty search committee
members that the university did not designate as equity advocates. I was unable to investigate
how faculty search committee members interpreted their colleagues’ equity advocate roles. In
this sense, I was not able to extensively analyze the mediating role of faculty search committee
members in the activity system. I also encountered challenges with recruiting pre-tenured female
equity advocates to participate in the interviews. The majority of their data was from the
observations. At times, those who did participate in the interviews introduced their pre-tenure
female faculty colleagues as characters in their reconstruction of the stories of being an equity
advocate.
Findings
I organized the findings into two sections to illustrate the different ways faculty enacted
their agency to advance racial equity as equity advocates on faculty search committees. In doing
so, my intent was not to categorize the faculty search committees; instead, the goal was to
describe the different power dynamics faculty encountered and how they responded. The
interlocking systems of race, gender, and professional ranking shaped the experiences of equity
advocates. In the first section, I called attention to the role of faculty search chairs in determining
the boundary work of equity advocates. The actions of faculty participants to negotiate their
equity advocate roles shaped their experiences. In this same section, I summarized two activity
systems that faculty participants experienced before moving into the final parts of the findings
were I identified two common strategies equity advocates used to embed racial equity into
faculty hiring.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 140

Negotiating Equity Advocate Roles
How faculty search chairs and members distinguished racial equity from faculty hiring
shaped the agency of equity advocates. The boundary work of faculty participants included
defining their roles as faculty search committee members and equity advocates. Equity advocates
on faculty search committees were situated between racial equity work and faculty hiring. The
agency of equity advocates was mediated by their perceptions of how faculty search committee
chairs and members defined their roles. The boundary between faculty hiring and equity work
were opportunities for search chairs and members to include or exclude equity advocates from
the hiring process. In this section, I describe how faculty advanced racial equity when interacting
with supportive search chairs and when working with resistant search chairs.
Integrated Role as Equity Advocates. Equity advocates, like Drs. Brian Cook, Lauren
Cortez, Donna Evans, and Jason Wright, who expressed feeling welcomed and included in the
hiring process experience more success in recruiting and hiring racially minoritized professors.
For example, Professor Wright commended the search chair for being “wonderfully intentional
about making sure that we were included in the process, so I felt like that modeled for the rest of
the committee the approach.” Similarly to Dr. Wright’s comments, Dr. Cortez believed that the
“search chair was a dream to work with [because] he was so organized, so deadline driven,”
which “made it easy to…sit down and meet about this [equity advocate] role.” It is important to
highlight that Professors Cook, Cortez, and Evans were senior faculty while Dr. Wright, a pre-
tenured white male professor, was on the same search committee with Dr. Cortez. Equity
advocates who believed search chairs welcomed them shared their roles in changing recruiting
strategies and hiring decisions as full committee members.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 141

Dr. Lauren Cortez, a Black female tenured professor, said that VOU’s initiative for
faculty diversity created opportunities to interrogate current recruitment practices at the
department level. According to Dr. Cortez, the faculty search committee was not “thinking
outside the box” because “doctoral training in that humanities field was highly specialized.” Drs.
Cortez and Wright proposed for the hiring committee to reach out to Historically Black Colleges
and Universities (HBCU) with master programs in the field to get information about where their
graduates attended doctoral programs.
I guess [doctorates in that field are] pretty specialized, and not a lot of schools
have them, so like big Midwestern land-grant schools have them. So Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, I think had one, things like that. So, [committee members]
knew to target, those programs, just because of the number of students. But then
also, we suggested, what about, even though HBCUs might not often have that
Ph.D. program in [the field], a lot of them do have master’s programs. So you
could still contact those departments because they know where their students
[attend doctorate programs].
As seen in Dr. Cortez’s quote, equity advocates played a role in developing and implementing
new recruitment plans to identify racially minoritized scholars. During an applied field search
committee meeting, the search chair, who was an international male professor, verbally
expressed his support for the university’s efforts to hire racially minoritized professors. When the
application only had seven faculty candidates, the search chair proposed to extend the application
deadline. In response to the search chairs comments, Dr. Leslie Hurtado, a Latina pre-tenured
professor, told the committee “to reach out to graduate departments at Historically Black
Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions” to increase the number of racially
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 142

minoritized applicants. While Dr. Rebecca Briggs, a white female pre-tenured professor,
suggested for the search chair to ask “the provost for additional money to advertise the job
announcement [at a national disciplinary consortium] to identify faculty of color in the job
market.” In addition to building a racially diverse pool, according to Drs. Boyer, Cook, Cortez,
Evans, and Wright, faculty search chairs and members who expressed their support for VOU’s
racial equity efforts also relied on the equity advocates to evaluate faculty applications for
equity-mindedness.
Equity advocates looked for whether faculty applicants were reflective about challenges
faced by racially minoritized students, provided compelling responses to equity questions, and
had experience with diversity. For example, Dr. Kevin Boyer, a white male tenured professor,
excitedly shared how the committee he served on had three strong finalists from diverse
backgrounds.
So we had three finalists. One African-American woman, one Asian-American
woman and then one white male. And it was really fascinating too, in the
interview process, to see that in the end, and I think our committee sort of was
pretty unanimous about this, that the white male applicant, who ended up getting
the position, had the most compelling responses to the equity questions. I suppose
it's not like world-altering. I think the other candidates obviously could, were able
to speak out of their own experience, personal experience. But they hadn't
actually done much in terms of really thinking about what that meant for their
pedagogy and what that meant for how that engaged with their research.
As another example, Drs. Brian Cook, a Black male tenured professor, and Donna Evans, a white
female tenured professor, shared how they focused on the way faculty applicants responded to
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 143

diversity and equity questions. Dr. Cook commented that “some of the candidates you could
almost tell that this was not something that they were used to having to answer [questions about
diversity].” I asked Dr. Evans what she looked for in the type of responses applicants provided
about equity and diversity:
I was looking for if they'd had any experience working with underrepresented
populations at all, and then if they were reflective and kind of thought through
challenges faced by underrepresented students, and if they had sought training.
We had one candidate who taught at a community college and went through a
specific training about reaching African American men…She was a white
woman, and she was like, "I realized that I really needed to work on [diversity],"
and so she ended up doing this whole training on it. Stuff like that, you know,
would impress me.
Similar to other equity advocates, Dr. Evans read faculty applications with the intention of
determining whether potential hires expressed awareness of differences by racial experiences or
a willingness to learn how to meet the needs of racially minoritized students. While some equity
advocates shared positive experiences, other equity advocates expressed their frustration when
they perceived faculty search chairs minimizing their roles on committees.
Compartmentalized Role as Equity Advocate. Drs. Eric Nuñez, a Latino tenured
professor, and Scott Jones, a white male pre-tenured professor, encountered challenges
advocating for racially minoritized candidates because of resistance from committee members.
Although Professor Jones felt empowered to talk about race and equity, the search chair
minimized his role by assigning responsibilities to committee members. Dr. Jones thought that it
was “in poor taste” when the search chair suggested to break down responsibilities “so all of [the
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 144

committee members] don't have to evaluate every part of every application.”
In fact, the one professor in the [applied field] department who was tasked with
rating everybody on their courses. He typed out a bunch of stuff and handed it out
to everybody and had his rating on there. To directly go against the rating that he
had handed out in print it would have been an affront to that person who was
tasked with this task. It would have been very difficult to have him hand us this
thing that he was tasked with and to say, "No, I'm not going with this because I
see some real genius in the teaching from this person's teaching philosophy, and
you gave him a two because they don't teach [a specific disciplinary course]."
Dr. Jones continued to share how the search chair removed him from the decision-making
process because of his role as an equity advocate. The search chair told him, “Since you're
trained at doing this, [Scott] why don't you go through and rank everybody with this last category
of are they able to mentor underrepresented groups.” Dr. Jones’s quotes revealed the ways
disciplinary content expertise was used to hire white male faculty members. In Professor Jones’s
case, the faculty search committee hired a white male applicant who had an adjunct position in
the department. The search chair removed Dr. Jones’s ability to integrate equity in hiring
decisions because his suggestions were relegated within the boundaries that equity was not a
signal of merit.
For other equity advocates, their frustration was in response to navigating unfamiliar
norms, practices, and power dynamics in faculty hiring. Dr. Donna Evans believed she was in an
“unusual search” because she was a social scientist serving on a humanities hiring committee.
What frustrated Dr. Evans was not just the small applicant pool, but also “the lack of racially
diverse candidates.” This was troubling to Professor Evans because the department had a history
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 145

of “hiring racially underrepresented faculty but had trouble retaining them.” She commented that
“If we'd had an applicant pool that small in my department, we would have just done, it would
have been a failed search, and we would have started again. I guess there are different norms.”
She also expressed that it was disappointing that the current search was to replace a minoritized
professor. “The sad part is, that the person, it was sad that we had to do a search. They had an
amazing person [from a racially minoritized group].”
The type of experience equity advocates had depended on whether faculty search chairs
and committee members welcomed them as committee members. As I illustrate in the following
two sections, racial equity work is a form of boundary work even in spaces where search chairs
and members vocally expressed their support to hire racially minoritized professors. As I outline
throughout the rest of this section, the intersectional power relations of race, gender, discipline,
and tenure shaped how equity advocates advanced racial equity in faculty hiring. In the next
section, I reconstructed a narrative about the intersecting systems of professional status and
gender creating unique challenges for equity advocates to negotiate and resist.
The Invisible Language of Bro Code in Faculty Hiring
The notion of bro code was popularized in pop culture media to describe the unwritten set
of rules that govern the relationship between male friends. The bro code manifested in faculty
hiring when search chairs and members critiqued and devalued the teaching and research of
female finalists while highlighting those of males. The interaction of race and gender with
professional status shaped the experiences of Drs. Taylor Bush, a white female tenured professor,
Leslie Hurtado, a Latina pre-tenured professor, and Rebecca Briggs, a white female pre-tenured
professor, as equity advocates on faculty search committees. Professor Taylor Bush, a white
female tenured professor, “found it weird, kind of weirdly strange” that the applied field faculty
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search committee she served on as an equity advocate “ended up [with] the men advocating for
the Indian male and us females were advocating for the Latina.” She elaborated by describing
how the meetings “got a little bit heated as well, because [the Latina finalist] was doing the job.
She’s exactly the demographic [the university] wanted, but also she’s really good at the job. That
to me was the perfect candidate.” However, the faculty search chair, who was an international
tenured male professor, had an “agenda in that they wanted to hire a specific, another male,”
according to Dr. Bush. The faculty search committee chair attended four out of the five evidence
team training and vocally expressed his support for the university’s racial equity efforts. Despite
that, according to Dr. Bush, he discounted the Latina finalist’s potential as a faculty colleague
because of an unspoken agenda to hire a male professor.
Towards the later stages of the hiring process, the power dynamics about gender and
status were visible in the conversations. Six months into the process, the applied field committee
met to decide on the top candidate from a finalist pool that included one Asian and two Latinx
candidates. At this stage of the hiring process, faculty search committees were evaluating faculty
candidates’ campus visits which included: interviews with the full search committee, teaching
demonstrations, interviews with the Dean and Provost, and interviews with a Tenure and
Promotion committee member. Faculty search committees also had the option to require finalist
to facilitate a research presentation if there was sufficient time, but “if any [additional] item is
done for one candidate, it should be done for all candidates” (Faculty Search Guidelines).
However, this faculty search committee did not request faculty candidates to facilitate a teaching
presentation. Instead, the faculty search committee relied on the research presentation, which
was attended only by faculty, to evaluate the “candidate’s ability to engage students in the
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learning process as well as the candidate’s command of the discipline” (Faculty Search
Guidelines).
At the start of the meeting, the search chair informed the committee that the Asian male
applicant had the highest overall ranking followed by the Latina professor and the Latino
doctoral candidate. Before allowing the committee to discuss each finalist, the search chair
reiterated that he wanted to “hire someone with experience in research and service and someone
that can hit the ground running in a small department.” It became apparent that the committee
was not entertaining the Latino male candidate because he was still in graduate school. In
describing his lack of research and teaching experience, a white male committee member
referred to the Latino faculty candidate as a “puppy” who would need mentorship. Dr. Bush said
that even though the Latino candidate did not have the “most research and teaching experience,
he could play a significant role in mentoring Latinx students.” She, however, was contending
with normative evaluation criteria that applicants with experience had the networks and capacity
to mentor graduate students. For example, the search chair referenced the benefit of the faculty
male candidate’s professional networks as “opportunities to support students who are interested
in internships.”
When the committee moved to discuss the top two finalists, there were differences in
how committee members interpreted research, service, and teaching experience. For example,
the search chair said that the Asian male had the necessary research and service experience and
that his “teaching would come in time.” Drs. Bush and Hurtado raised their concerns with the
Asian male’s lack of experience mentoring Black and Latinx students. Dr. Rebecca Briggs added
that it would be a “steep learning curve [for the Asian male] to learn how to wear many hats,”
since his training was primarily in research. Soon after, the committee moved to discuss the
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Latina faculty candidate. The search chair questioned whether she would be able to establish a
research agenda. In addition to emphasizing the Latina’s teaching experience as an adjunct
professor, Dr. Hurtado highlighted the Latina’s experience with program evaluation and
involvement with the Latinx students in the program. The search chair shared with the committee
that the Latina’s teaching evaluations were not positive. Immediately following his comments,
Dr. Bush questioned the source of the search chair’s comments. The search chair clarified that he
had access to the Latina’s teaching evaluations but remembered that he was unable to consider
them because faculty candidates were not asked to submit teaching evaluations. In an interview,
Dr. Bush recalled feeling that the chair “just didn’t want [the Latina finalist]. I don't think he was
masking it.” She further elaborated that the phrasing of the chair’s comments about the Latina’s
teaching evaluations was “sneaky” and surprised the search committee.
The three equity advocates were concerned with the chair’ comments because the faculty
search committee did not require faculty candidates to submit teaching evaluations or facilitate a
teaching presentation. At this moment, there was a sense of deception in the room about the
criteria being used to identify the top candidate. Dr. Bush believed that the search chair was
implying that the “[Latina’s] teaching was not up to par. And [her teaching] was. She was above,
absolutely above. I kind of thought there was a little bit of deception. I didn’t appreciate that. I
really didn’t appreciate that.” Professor Bush informed the search chair—who had admitted not
reading the new Faculty Search Guidelines and relied on his memory to organize the hiring
process—that search committees were required to document every step of the hiring process for
the provost to review and make the final decision. The search chair was taken aback and visibly
upset by Dr. Bush’s comments. He expressed his disagreement with the provost making the final
decision; and how he planned to raise the issue during the faculty senate meeting.
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A month after the applied field committee met to discuss the finalist, the provost
requested a meeting with the search committee because they failed to evaluate faculty applicants’
teaching experience properly. The provost held a meeting with the committee to include the top
two finalist teaching evaluations in the hiring decision. In this meeting, the provost heard
everyone’s thoughts for each of the candidates before and after reading the teaching evaluations.
In this meeting, the search chair emphasized the low teaching evaluations and lack of research
experience of the Latina. Dr. Hurtado used departmental level data and academic literature to
advocate for the Latina finalist. When Professor Hurtado said that the Latina would help advance
VOU’s HSI designation, the search chair countered that the graduate students would be
interested in the Asian male’s scholarship because it was global instead of local. Dr. Hurtado
argued that the “29% of the Latinx graduate students in the program” would find the Latina
finalist’s local research on policy-shaping towns surrounding the Mexican-United States border
more interesting. She referenced literature to argue that cultural and gender differences shaped
the hiring committee’s perspective that the male finalist was more comfortable and confident
with his research than the female finalist.
During the meeting with the provost, Dr. Briggs’ stance changed from advocating for the
Latina candidate to supporting the Asian male finalist. According to Dr. Bush, Professor Briggs
did not agree with the equity advocates questioning the search chair’s power. In an interview,
Professor Bush shared:
[Rebecca] felt very uncomfortable being the equity advocate in that position
because she’s untenured in the department. She also felt very upset that [the
search chair] and his authority was being questioned as a very senior member of
the department and he’s very well-respected in the department. She felt kind of
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sad… that we shouldn't have advocated for [the Latina finalist] at the sacrifice of
[the search chair]. I'm like, “Well, no, [the Latina finalist] is very, very, very
qualified, very qualified.” But [the search chair] has to understand as well that we
are ... it’s not just all males to be hiring all males. That we actually have more
than males in a classroom. The females do need a strong female role model,
which [the Latina finalist] was and is. (Interview)
Professor Briggs’ experience illuminated the fear and anxiety of untenured equity advocates
required to stand up to senior departmental colleagues and the strength of hierarchical norms. Dr.
Bush’s reflection outlined the ways race, gender, disciplinary expertise, and status shaped the
intersecting systems of power in the department. She further commented how the provost’s fear
of upsetting senior faculty members was a reason why the search was not pulled.
I was really furious that [the provost] didn't pull the search. I know myself and
[Leslie] kind of talked about it and we were just absolutely furious that [the
provost] should have pulled the search. At some point, you have to send a
message that you're serious and that this is serious…But I think part of me feels
that she shot herself in the foot because it’s going to be harder now. Again, it’s
going to be much harder to do it when she hasn’t set the precedence of you know
what, I mean business. This is a serious matter that we're doing and I mean
business.
Dr. Bush’s quote outlined how the provost’s unwillingness to cancel the search would create
additional barriers for equity advocates working with faculty who were not supportive of the new
Faculty Search Guidelines. The boundary work of equity advocates included negotiating and
resisting the unwritten rules of the bro code in faculty hiring. In this faculty search committee,
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the search chair had biases towards hiring a male faculty candidate over the Latina finalist who
met the department’s and university’s needs. The equity advocates’ efforts fell short because of
their intersecting identities as women and pre-tenured faculty, except Dr. Bush who was a
tenured professor in a different department. Even though the search chair vocally supported
VOU’s racial equity efforts, when the equity advocates challenged his authority in decision-
making the boundaries of bro code became visible. Faculty agency for racial equity in faculty
hiring is a form of boundary work to negotiate and resist male gendered norms. In the following
section, I describe another activity system where race and professional status created challenges
for equity advocates to hire racially minoritized professors.
Birds of a Feather Flock Together: Discursive Moves and White Homophily
The proverb “birds of a feather flock together” describes the tendency of individuals to
associate and bond with similar others (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001). In faculty
decision-making, professors’ identities shape how they respond to similarities and differences in
graduate applications (Posselt, 2016). Dr. Scott Jones, a white male pre-tenured professor,
defined white homophily when “two members of the search committee that were older white
males… favored [candidates’] resumes [that] looked a lot more like their resumes. So they just
identified with those people more.” In this section, I highlight the STEM faculty hiring activity
system where Dr. Taylor Bush, a white female tenured professor, was the search chair of the
hiring committee. This faculty search committee had two searches to hire an assistant professor
in two different fields within the same department. In this search committee, the other equity
advocate was Dr. Eric Nuñez, a Latino tenured professor who had experience with diversity and
equity. When I asked Dr. Nuñez whether he encountered any challenges as an equity advocate,
he recalled the process being:
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Particularly smooth right up until the end. I think everybody was pretty much on
the same page and bought into the mission and the idea and everything. All the
way up, everybody was very excited about the candidate. The pool was a diverse
group. Everybody was excited. Then at the very end is where we had kind of the
conflict that ultimately led to not hiring the diverse, or not offering a job to the
Hispanic candidate.
Dr. Nunez’s was alluding to the tensions between Dr. Bush and a white senior faculty member
who wanted to hire a white male finalist. Drs. Nuñez and Bush were advocating for a Latino
male candidate who met the department’s need to hire someone with teaching and administrative
experience who aligned with the university’s racial equity efforts. Professor Nuñez described
how a white female committee member “was just very smart, very smart, very strategic about
it…very thorough and detailed” to identify where the Latino finalist “screwed up on the job
talk." The following example shows how equity advocates responded to white senior professors
who used discursive strategies to exclude racially minoritized finalist from hiring pools.
The STEM hiring committee met to discuss the three finalists in the second search
(different from the finalists described above) among whom were: an international Asian doctoral
candidate, a white male assistant professor, and an international Asian full professor. I arrived at
the conference room a few minutes before the start of the meeting. When I sat down, the white
female professor turned towards me and said: “I have not finished watching the teaching
demonstrations.” This was odd because she had submitted her evaluation rubric from the campus
visits even though she had not watched the video recordings of the two Asian candidates’
teaching presentations. While Dr. Bush calculated the quantitative rankings, the two white
committee members jokingly discussed the Asian male full professor. The white female
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professor told the white male professor how she was staring at him because of the faculty
candidate’s lengthy responses to the questions. Soon after, Dr. Bush finished tallying the
quantitative scores and informed the committee that they had to go over each finalist. The white
female committee member responded by saying “we are not seriously considering him [meaning
the Asian full professor]?” “Whether we intend to hire him or not,” Dr. Bush contended, “we still
have to go over each one of the candidates.” With hesitation, the white female agreed and
requested to begin the meeting with the international male Asian full professor, followed by the
international male Asian doctoral candidate, and then the white male assistant professor.
Dr. Bush asked the faculty search committee if the student evaluations from the teaching
presentation would bring a different perspective about the potential of the Asian male full
professor. The white female professor, who confessed to not watching the entire teaching
presentation, insisted that the faculty candidate’s accent was not the problem. Instead, she was
concerned that he read off the PowerPoint the whole time. Professor Bush reminded the
committee that the Asian full professor told them during the campus visit that he used the
PowerPoints to minimize any issues students may have with his accent. The white male
committee member raised his concerns with the faculty finalist’s inability to articulate his
research throughout the campus visit. Both white committee members questioned whether he
would be able to establish his research agenda without his collaborators even though his
curriculum vitae outlined his publication record. At this moment, Dr. Eric Nuñez told the
committee members that they were “culturally insensitive to differences in how people with
collectivistic values expressed themselves from those with individualistic values.” As their
responses to their colleagues demonstrate, Drs. Bush and Nuñez took on the role of redirecting
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conversations when committee members failed to be reflective of the value racially diverse
candidates would add to the department.
The conversation transitioned to the international Asian male doctoral candidate. The
committee boosted the candidate’s scholarship for its potential to garner student interest and
advance the department’s research agenda. However, the white female committee member
questioned whether the faculty candidate would have issues with his visa. Dr. Bush immediately
responded by saying “that unqualified concerns about visas should not be a reason to remove a
strong finalist from the pool.” Professor Nuñez highlighted the Asian male’s faculty candidate’s
“connections since he went to [a local university] for his master’s degree.” Dr. Bush informed
the committee that the Asian male “has other offers.” Without any real concerns with the
international Asian male finalist, the committee moved on to discuss the white male assistant
professor.
Dr. Bush referenced the white male candidate’s comments about how his “Ph.D. advisor
told him that he was not R1 material and that he should focus on teaching” and “once he
embraced teaching he became very student-centered.” The white female tenured professor
informed the search committee that she knew the white male candidate’s Ph.D. advisor and that
he was “egotistic.” After the comment, the search committee members remained silent before
Drs. Bush and Nuñez raised their concerns with the white male’s ability to establish his research
agenda and biased behavior against women. Professor Nuñez wondered how the female students
during the teaching presentation felt about the white male assistant professor using a “bro
connection” to interact with male students. Professor Bush agreed and added that she “believed
that he was sexist and I also noticed the bro connection during the teaching presentation.” She
followed her comments by admitting that her concerns started during the phone interview. In a
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disapproving tone, the white female committee member declared “that we weren’t supposed to
go back [to previous stages of the hiring process].” Dr. Bush clarified that her reference was to
the teaching presentation. The white female committee member asked Dr. Bush if her bias
against Mormons was playing a role in her evaluation of the white male candidate. Dr. Bush said
no and gave the following three reasons why she was concerned with offering the position to the
white male candidate: “1) Why was he leaving his current institution right before tenure; 2)
Would he be able to do research (he has no publications); and 3) Would he be able to mentor
women?” In an interview with Dr. Bush, she recollected “feeling happy that we did have
candidates that were fully qualified [and] brilliant.” However, she said, “it was just unfortunate
that [the senior white female professor] made such a stink about [the Asian male finalist].” Dr.
Bush believed that the reason why the senior white female committee member “was very
passionate about the white guy” was that the white male candidate “was comfortable [and]
something she knows.” Although Dr. Bush believed “he was a nice guy, he didn't add anything
to the department. Even his research didn't really add anything to the department.”
In describing the white male finalist’s teaching, Dr. Nuñez said that he felt the
candidate’s response “to the HSI question was good.” Dr. Bush shared that the white male
candidate met with VOU’s Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) coordinator. According to Dr.
Bush, the HSI coordinator “had a different impression about the [white male candidate’s]
potential to help the university advance its HSI designation.” The white female tenured professor
referenced the quantitative scores to point out that the white male candidate was the top
candidate. In an interview, Dr. Bush reflected on how “the numbers are just a starting point for
conversation. They're not a decision maker, or they shouldn't be the decision maker. Maybe the
person who did score the highest turns out to be the person who is the best.” Dr. Bush believed
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that the conversations “frustrated [the white female senior professor] to no end. I think you heard
when she was complaining about it. “It doesn't matter; we're are not going to hire the first
candidate anyway. It doesn't matter what we say.” She continued by saying, “it did not matter if
the [white male] was the top candidate because the [Asian finalist] will be offered the job,” Once
the white female senior professor expressed her frustration, the conversation ended with Dr.
Bush asking her if she would have a problem with the provost offering the job to the Asian
candidate, to which the white female committee member said no. Dr. Bush emphasized that the
provost wanted faculty search committees to document each step of the process and to provide as
much information about each finalist for the provost to decide who to hire. Dr. Bush used her
positional power as search chair to guide the committee’s conversations when the white female
tenured professor wanted to offer the position to the white male candidate. Unlike the previous
section, the equity advocates in the STEM search committee were tenured professors. In the final
section of the findings I identified two strategies equity advocates used to legitimize their roles to
implement racial equity in faculty hiring.
Strategies to Overcome Power Dynamics
In this section, I present two themes that describe common strategies equity advocates
used to advance racial equity across the three types of activity systems. Equity advocates
discussed how their university’s support of their responsibilities on faculty search committees
legitimized their role and how they informally met with other equity advocates to support each
other.
Legitimate Role as an Equity Advocate. Equity advocates reported that having
administrative and faculty support legitimized their roles on faculty search committees. When
equity advocates encountered challenges, they often referenced the provost and research on
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equity, implicit bias, and diversity. Some equity advocates relied on their status as search chairs
or referenced empirical literature to support their stance on equity. When I asked Dr. Nuñez
about his new role, he said, “Well, I mean you have institutional legitimacy, right? You have the
backing of the provost and the dean.” Having the support of the provost empowered equity
advocates to tell faculty search committee members that it was their job to identify norms and
practices that biased against racially minoritized faculty. Dr. Boyer noted in the interview how
equity advocates had the “position and the backing from academic affairs to…intervene in ways
that reoriented searches” on the right track. Professor Bush shared how her experience as an
equity advocate has been positive because of the university’s commitment to “actually increase
faculty diversity across all departments,” instead of just valuing diversity. Also, having a defined
role as outside members made equity advocates feel productive on hiring committees. In
previous years, faculty members with appointments in a different department were excluded
because they did not have the content knowledge to make decisions. Although equity advocates
acknowledged that the process to embed equity was not perfect, they expressed confidence that
equity started to shape the overall approach to faculty hiring. According to Dr. Wright, being an
equity advocate will “get easier over time because the role would become part of university
policy.”
Equity Advocate Pick and Roll. In basketball, the pick and roll is an offensive play in
which a player sets a screen for a teammate dribbling the ball and then moves towards the basket
to receive a pass. In this study, equity advocates on the same faculty search committee would
meet and talk about ways to support each other. After each search committee meeting, I noted
how Drs. Bush and Nuñez spoke and walked to the parking lot together. In the interviews, both
of them shared that they discussed the department’s politics and how to advocate for faculty
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candidates of color. The white senior faculty in Dr. Bush’s department had a history of hiring
professors who mirrored their identities and training. During one of her conversations walking to
the parking lot, Dr. Bush shared how Dr. Nuñez told her “Look, I'm going to be very supportive
because obviously that is what I am. I am going to be extra supportive because it’s your
department. But I'm going to ask questions.” To which Dr. Bush excitedly responded
“Absolutely.” Professor Nuñez affirmed that he would ask the difficult questions “because you
have to work with [the senior white faculty]. She’s hard to work with.” In reflecting on her
relationship with Dr. Nuñez, Dr. Bush described her excitement about having an external senior
professor setting a pick for her to score the basket on equity.
It was nice to have someone to be able to chat with and to say okay, you know
what, this candidate is very strong. But there might be a little resistance to it
because there’s a white candidate. How can we make sure that they get a fair
hearing? Not just a fair hearing, but a strong fair hearing. This is what we're
looking for and this is what we're pushing for. It was nice. It was nice.
Professor Bush was clear about her relationship with Professor Nuñez in helping her challenge
senior white committee members who favored white faculty candidates. As noted in the quote
above, equity advocates agreed that their informal meetings were opportunities to strategize
ways to create a transparent and equitable hiring structure.
Dr. Eric Nuñez also explained how the network of senior white professors at VOU had
created a culture that excluded racially minoritized groups from the professoriate. He believed
the equity advocates could create a similar network to counteract and possibly infiltrate such
networks.
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If the personal relationships have skewed against building the culture that
[favored white faculty] to come here in the first place, this is the friend
relationships [among senior white faculty] used to push back, right? It's kind of
network on network. Then I think part of the job is that you have to build these
counter networks that can challenge the [exclusionary] network and maybe even
infiltrate, bridge the networks because [equity advocates] are going to have
friends.
Dr. Nuñez’s quote outlined a sense of cohesiveness among equity advocates. Drs. Bush,
Cook, Cortez, and Wright also affirmed the role of their personal and professional relationships
with other equity advocates. In addition to getting along, equity advocates were also like-minded
about equity issues. Professor Cortez noted, “because we are super friendly and knew each other
really well before [being equity advocates on the search committee], it was easy to send a text.”
Discussion
The goal of this article has been to examine and illustrate the experiences of professors
advancing racial equity in faculty hiring as members of faculty search committees. The equity
advocates helped the university increase the number of tenure-track and tenured racially
minoritized professor hired. In the first year, faculty developed the official role of being an
equity advocate the university hired six racially minoritized professors. In the second year, the
university hired eight. Although this study only collected data after the first year of
implementing the equity advocate role, it highlights the experiences, including successes and
challenges, of equity advocates. I brought together cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and
intersectionality theory to argue that faculty agency for racial equity is a form of boundary work.
Faculty participants were attempting to change an institutionalized process that legitimizes
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knowledge and approaches rooted in white, male, and Western norms (Gonzales, 2018; Patton,
2016). From this perspective, the professoriate values singular and objective forms of knowledge
production over interdisciplinary and subjective forms of knowledge production (Gonzales,
2018; Patton, 2016). As a structure, professors maintain and reproduce the process of faculty
hiring. Nevertheless, professors have the potential to act as agents within and against the context
of cultural and structural pressures (Baez, 2000; Gonzales, 2014; O’Meara, 2015; Sulé, 2014).
My analysis revealed the struggle experienced by professors advancing racial equity to
create a space to change systems of power. Before continuing with the discussion, it is important
to reiterate that the application of the conceptual framework was not to categorize faculty search
committees or faculty agency. The focus was to illustrate the different systems of power that
faculty have to reproduce, negotiate, and transform to advance racial equity. Focusing on the
interaction between professors’ social location and the systems of power highlighted how faculty
interacted with the artifacts (e.g., teaching evaluations, research agenda), rules (e.g., hidden
agendas, white homophily, bro code), community (e.g., search chairs and committee members),
and division of labor (e.g., equity expertise, recruiting racially minoritized faculty) of faculty
hiring. Instead of focusing on the departmental factors that increase faculty agency (Campbell &
O’Meara, 2014), this study identified the conflicts professors encountered when they challenged
established power relations based on race, gender, and professional status.
The findings add a theoretical understanding of faculty agency by focusing on the
dialectical relationship between professors’ social location and the activity system of faculty
search committees. The findings illustrate the ways systems of power interact with faculty
agency. Similar to faculty in Gonzales’ (2018) and Sulé’s (2014) studies, professors managed
and resisted systems of power in faculty search committees by minding and subverting
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boundaries. For example, Dr. Leslie Hurtado minded the bro code boundary by using
departmental data to highlight the disparity of Latina professors in the department as a reason
why the search committee should hire the Latina finalist. At the same time, she subverted the bro
code boundary by referencing research to explain that gender norms shaped committee members’
perspective of the male finalist being the most confident and competent applicant. Ultimately,
equity advocates advanced racial equity by legitimizing their equity advocate roles and
informally strategizing with other equity advocates. Equity advocates legitimized their roles by
clarifying their intentions to help faculty search committees hire the most qualified faculty
candidate who will help advance the university’s student-centered values. They strategized with
other equity advocates by agreeing to support each other about being intentional of recruiting
racially minoritized professors and faculty candidates who can mentor racially minoritized
students.
By situating professors’ social location, it is possible to understand the boundary work
required to advance racial equity. When equity advocates encountered resistance from search
chairs or committee members they relied on established artifacts (e.g., research and teaching
experience), rules (e.g., hiring most qualified), community (e.g., search committee members),
and division of labor (e.g., finding the most qualified to meet department’s and university’s
need) to advance racial equity. Recall when Drs. Taylor Bush, Leslie Hurtado, and Rebecca
Briggs were advocating for the Latina finalist who had teaching experience and experience
mentoring racially minoritized students. The search chair, who was an international male tenured
professor, undervalued the Latina’s experience when he referenced the Latina’s teaching
evaluations without sharing them with the search committee. According to Dr. Bush, the search
chair had an agenda to hire another international male professor with the intention to expand the
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department’s international market. To advocate for the Latina finalist, Dr. Hurtado used
legitimate artifacts such as data disaggregated by race, research interests, and teaching
experience to argue why the Latina was the strongest faculty candidate. In this example, equity
advocates had to negotiate boundaries of gender and professional status to determine that
institutionalized artifacts (e.g., research and teaching experience) provided them the best
opportunity to advance racial equity.
The findings also showed how equity advocates were able to transform structures by
changing recruiting and hiring criteria when they had positional power (i.e., search chair, tenured
status). For example, Drs. Lauren Cortez, a Black female tenured professor, and Kevin Boyer, a
white male tenured professor, helped search committees prioritize faculty candidates’ experience
mentoring Black and Latinx students. In addition to being a search chair or tenured, faculty
participants described the role of their equity advocates being legitimized as a form of
professional status. From a CHAT perspective, faculty participants relied on the provost’s
inclusion in the community of faculty hiring to legitimize their roles (e.g., division of labor) as
equity advocates. Equity advocates utilized different mediating factors of the activity system to
change recruiting and hiring practices.
In addition to perceptions shaped by their professional status, equity advocates’
perspectives about the climate of the activity system shaped how they advocated for racial
equity. The presence of supportive faculty search committee chairs, or at the very least, search
chairs who were willing to implement racial equity in their hiring process played a role in
mediating structures of power. This finding contributes to the current literature on faculty agency
by illustrating the power relationships in faculty search committees depend on the social location
of equity advocates. The findings reinforce the results of prior studies that faculty perceptions of
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their work environments shape their agentic actions (Campbell & O’Meara, 2011). Professors’
perspectives about search chairs integrating or compartmentalizing the equity advocate role
shaped their actions. Although faculty participants expressed that search chairs viewed them as
experts on racial equity, some were more successful than others in changing hiring criteria. For
example, professors who believed search chairs integrated them as valuable members of the
search committee experienced minimal challenges in creating new recruitment and evaluation
criteria. However, professors working with search chairs who compartmentalized their equity
advocate roles expressed feeling frustrated because they were unable to advocate for racially
minoritized professors outside conversations on diversity.
The findings also revealed the significance of having two equity advocates on faculty
search committees. For example, all seven professors interviewed shared how they informally
strategized to overcome resistance from senior faculty who were primarily white. This finding
highlights the significance of pairing equity advocates who complement each other. Recall how
Dr. Bush, who was the search chair, was going up against a history of white senior faculty hiring
professors with similar cultural and professional backgrounds. Dr. Nuñez, who was the other
equity advocate, had working relationships with the senior white faculty which helped him step
in when tensions between Dr. Bush and the senior white female professor surfaced.
This study also contributes to the literature on faculty agency for racial equity that has
focused on the role of artifacts as a learning mechanism to develop a sense of agency (Bishop,
2014; Felix et al., 2015). In this study, faculty did use artifacts to advance racial equity, but how
they made sense of artifacts was mediated by their social location. All the equity advocates
received the same training (see chapter 3) and were introduced to the same artifacts, such as
equity-oriented interview questions and recruitment strategies. However, how professors used
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 164

the artifacts depended on the systems of power associated with their social location. Drs. Brian
Cook, Donna Evans, Lauren Cortez, and Kevin Boyer reported experiencing more success
introducing new recruitment and evaluation criteria, but they were also full professors working
with welcoming search chairs. While Drs. Leslie Hurtado, Rebecca Briggs, Eric Nuñez, and
Taylor Bush were working with colleagues who were resistant to changing the faculty hiring
process.
Implications for Practice
My analysis of equity advocates on faculty search committees has practical implications
for university leaders who want to invest monetary resources in training faculty to advance racial
equity in faculty hiring. Faculty would benefit from analyzing departmental cultures to identify
the systems of power that reproduce predominantly white male hiring pools, which was training
similar to that received by equity advocates in this study (see Chapter 3 for an analysis of their
training). In addition to analyzing departmental cultures, university leadership should train
faculty search committee members to take active steps to identify the power dynamics in peer
review. In this study, equity advocates encountered racial, gendered, and professional status
power relations. Faculty search committees should ask themselves how race, gender, and
professional status bias their evaluation of racially minoritized candidates.
The finding on Equity Advocate Pick and Roll emphasized the significance of teamwork
to strategize against the systems of power and change faculty recruiting and hiring practices.
Ideally, university leaders should aspire to train all faculty search committee members to
advance racial equity. However, as this study’s findings illustrated, faculty search committee
members, even those who verbally expressed their support, presented challenges for equity
advocates. The inclusion of two equity advocates proved to be effective for faculty participants
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 165

to support each other and to complement each other when one’s social location compromised
their legitimacy to advance racial equity. University-wide efforts to advance racial equity in
faculty hiring need to include the ways professors’ social location can facilitate or impede their
agency for racial equity. For these reasons, higher education leaders need to be strategic about
who to train as equity advocates and which equity advocates will have the legitimacy in the eyes
of their peers to advance racial equity in specific disciplines.
Concluding Remarks
Studying how professors advance racial equity in highly contested activities that
redistribute power and resources, such as faculty search committees, helped me identify the
prevailing systems of power that were competing against racial equity. Race, gender, and faculty
appointment and rank were the systems of power that shaped the experiences of equity
advocates. The addition of intersectionality allowed me to describe the boundary work of equity
advocates while focusing on the strategies they developed to advance racial equity. In the
following section, I summarize and synthesize the findings from the three empirical studies
followed by the implications for practice, policy, and research.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 166

Chapter 5: Summary and Conclusions
My motivation for this dissertation study was to learn how professors advance racial
equity in different areas of faculty life. As mentioned in chapter one, faculty play a significant
role in promoting racial equity because of their autonomy and independence to maintain or
change a university’s research, service, and teaching (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Stromquist,
2017). However, the majority of faculty are not trained to address issues of racial equity nor are
they rewarded for advancing racial equity (O’Meara, 2008). In this Chapter, I summarize key
findings from the three studies presented in chapters two, three, and four before synthesizing
their relevance to the literature on faculty agency and racial equity. I also describe the theoretical
contributions of the findings followed by the practical and policy implications for faculty
professional development to advance racial equity. I conclude this chapter with proposed
avenues for future research.
According to the relatively small body of literature produced to date, professors who
learn that their practices are implicated in the perpetuation of racial inequity may gain a sense of
purposeful agency to advance racial equity (Bishop, 2014; Felix et al., 2015; Peña, 2012). This
body of literature primarily focuses on how artifacts, such as data disaggregated by race or race-
conscious language, mediate faculty learning within inquiry-based interventions (Ching, 2018).
The findings across the three empirical studies contribute to the literature by highlighting that
faculty agency for racial equity is a form of boundary work. Professors’ historicized lessons and
experiences with race and racism shaped their perceptions of their available options to advance
racial equity. I sought to explain how professors’ social location informs how they make sense of
their environment to identify their choices to advance racial equity. Four assumptions guided this
study:
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 167

1) Faculty can change structures
2) Faculty agency is domain specific
3) Faculty can simultaneously reproduce, negotiate, and transform structures
4) Faculty social location shapes agency
The design, therefore, uses qualitative data, such as documents, interviews, and observations, and
analyzes faculty agency for racial equity in different college campuses and activities of faculty
life. Chapters two, three, and four emphasize these analyses as discrete inquiries. I briefly
summarize, then synthesize, findings across studies.
Summary
Taking into consideration the research questions
7
, the literature on faculty agency,
theories on boundary crossing and boundary work, cultural-historical activity system,
intersectionality, and findings, I conclude that faculty agency for racial equity is best understood
as a dialectical relationship between social location and structure. The ways professors advance
racial equity depends on how their personal and professional experiences with racism inform
their meaning-making about the context. At the individual level, professors’ social identities
(e.g., race, gender) and professional identities (e.g., status) matter to the extent that they are
associated with systems of power. For example, race, gender, and professional status become
salient during conversations about racism and racial equity. When a Black male tenured
professor identified the culture of niceness as the reason why racial disparities exist in faculty
hiring, it brought to the surface that being an equity advocate is an intellectual- and emotion-
driven effort. Faculty enter racial equity work with different levels of commitment and comfort

(1) What are the experiences of professors advancing racial equity in different areas of faculty life? (2) How do
professors implement racial equity in different areas of faculty life? (3) How do professors respond to challenges
they encounter in their efforts to implement racial equity?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 168

to confront the multiple ways their practices are impeded in perpetuating racial inequity. In this
dissertation study, professors participated in training to use artifacts (e.g., data disaggregated by
race, race-conscious language) to advance racial equity. The inquiry-based interventions gave
some faculty, primarily racially minoritized professors, legitimacy to advance racial equity while
others, mostly white professors, a sense of purposeful agency for equity. University-wide
interventions on racial equity legitimize the personal and professional experiences with racism
for racially minoritized faculty while it provides white faculty opportunities to learn about the
ways racism permeate their practices and policies. For instance, in chapter two, white faculty
express their excitement about using data disaggregated by race to get access to resources to
change student-faculty advising. In chapter three, white faculty move from technical to moral
motivations about why racial equity in faculty hiring is significant to address. For the majority of
white professors in this study, racial equity is an intellectual project for growth. The agency of
racially minoritized professors across the three empirical studies is an effort to legitimize their
knowledge, experiences, and practices as racial equity work. This is not to suggest that racially
minoritized professors do not intellectually gain from inquiry-based interventions. On the
contrary, the findings suggest that professors’ social location matters when engaging in racial
equity work.
The findings also emphasize how changes in systems of power interrelate with emotional
reactions to racism. The majority of professors experienced anger, disappointment, and
frustration when learning about the racial discrimination racially minoritized groups’ experience
on college campuses. The acknowledgment of racism is the cause of racial inequities helps
professors move into realistic and pragmatic strategies (Bell, 1993). For example, when faculty
in chapter three acknowledge the ways the culture of niceness silences racially minoritized,
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 169

women, and pre-tenure faculty, they decided to require each search committee to have two equity
advocates. This finding highlights that emotions can be opportunities for learning that can lead to
change with the proper tools and commitment to address issues of injustice.
Since racial equity work requires faculty to interrogate and disturb structures, faculty
awareness of campus politics, both within and between university units (e.g., disciplinary
departments, program offices), matters to enable them to determine the viable choices they have
to advance racial equity. Given the importance of political knowledge of the systems of power on
campus, having working relationships in areas where faculty have minimal levels of professional
membership matters. Seeing that faculty are socialized to operate within the realms of their
expertise, advancing racial equity beyond isolated efforts requires teamwork. All the faculty in
this dissertation study were part of a team with members from different disciplines and program
offices, including administrators and staff. When faculty are advancing racial equity in spaces
where they have no professional membership (e.g., admissions, different disciplinary field), they
rely on a team member with membership in those spaces or a team member for support. In
chapter one, professors took time to develop a rapport with admission officers before suggesting
practical recommendations to increase the number of racially minoritized students who accept
the admissions offer. In chapter three, equity advocates strategize to support each other to
overcome any forms of resistance from faculty search committee members. The legitimacy of
racial equity work also relies on having in-group membership in the different areas of campus
life.
In addition to teamwork, having administration and faculty colleagues support
professors’ racial equity efforts gives professors a sense of legitimacy. Faculty encounter
resistance, both subtle and overt that requires them to develop strategies to communicate why
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 170

racial equity is significant. However, being able to rely on colleagues, administrative leaders, and
their training gives them a choice to align their racial equity efforts with the university’s
missions and values.
Faculty reproduce structures when they have minimal membership by appropriating
accepted artifacts (e.g., Strategic Plans, administrative, research, and teaching experience), rules
(e.g., hiring the most qualified candidate), and division of labor (e.g., search chairs deciding on
the top candidate) that do not advance racial equity. The dialectic relationship between social
location and structure reveals that professors reproduce, negotiate, and transform structures to
advance racial equity. For example, faculty integrate racial equity goals into institutional and
departmental policies to require others on campus to engage in racial equity work. In the case of
faculty search committees, professors align racial equity efforts (e.g., who can mentor Black and
Latinx students) with accepted discourses such as which faculty candidate can “hit the ground
running.” They experience the most success at transforming structures when they have the
professional status (e.g., tenured) or when they change their own practices (e.g., student
advising) in their home departments. Tenured professors with critical knowledge about campus
politics of racial equity experience more freedom to make changes in departmental level
practices for advising students or hiring faculty. However, most faculty negotiate existing
structures by coordinating differences between racial equity and traditional forms of faculty work
(e.g., faculty hiring). The findings reveal how faculty agency for racial equity is a constant
struggle to create opportunities to advance racial equity.
In summary, the findings of this research illustrate that with the appropriate
administrative and academic staff support, professors can advance racial equity in different areas
of faculty life. Faculty involved in racial equity work do not enter such efforts detached from the
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 171

historical legacies of racism embedded in universities. Instead, some faculty are looking for ways
to scale their individual efforts to systemic levels, while others are learning how to address issues
of racial inequity. As the findings outline, faculty use multiple strategies, including identifying
the problem, reflecting on systems of power, coordinating differences, and transforming
structures to advance racial equity. In the following section, I synthesize the main findings by
applying the different conceptual frameworks I used to analyze the data.
Synthesis
Higher education leaders are investing resources in training faculty to develop the
capacity to advance racial equity. Professors, particularly those with tenure-track and tenured
positions, play significant roles to advance racial equity across the different university units.
Equity researchers in higher education study faculty agency for racial equity as a problem of
practice (Bensimon, 2007; Felix et al., 2015; Peña, 2012). From this perspective, with the proper
tools faculty can learn how their practices are implicated in racial inequity. Once faculty learn
about their role in perpetuating racial injustice, with the proper guidance, they will develop the
motivation to change their practices to advance racial equity. To my knowledge, only one
dissertation study considered how professors’ experiences with racism shapes their sense of
agency for equity (Bishop, 2014). However, typical in these studies is the focus on how inquiry-
based interventions help professors develop their agency for equity. As mentioned in chapter
one, my intention in this dissertation was to understand how faculty agency for racial equity
looked like in different areas of faculty life. To achieve this goal, I studied professors who
participated in inquiry-based interventions with a focus on how they advanced racial equity in
different spaces outside inquiry-based interventions.
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 172

My dissertation study advances knowledge on faculty agency for racial equity by
studying the problem from an agentic perspective. Critical race feminists argue that racially
minoritized professors are located between different worlds (Delgado-Bernal et al., 2012;
Gonzales, 2018; Sulé, 2014). From this perspective, I conceptualized faculty agency for racial
equity as a tension between social location and structure. The intersecting social identities (e.g.,
race, gender) and professional identities (e.g., rank, discipline) of professors are associated with
systems of power that create unique challenges for individual faculty to advance racial equity.
Since faculty agency is domain specific (O’Meara et al., 2014), professors use multiple
strategies, including perceptual and behavioral, to identify their choices to advocate for racial
equity. Instead of focusing on the factors that help professors develop a specific type of equity
agency, this study argues that faculty agency for racial equity is multidimensional and requires
professors to reproduce, negotiate, and transform structures simultaneously.
Researchers studying professors’ participation in inquiry-based interventions highlight
the role of artifacts in mediating learning about the existence of racial inequities and how to
address such injustices (Bensimon, 2007; Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Bishop, Bensimon, &
Dowd, 2015; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015; Felix et al., 2015; Peña, 2012). Similar to faculty in
these studies, faculty in this dissertation used artifacts (e.g., data disaggregated by race, equity-
minded interview questions) to move from identifying problems to practically solving them.
Limitations to focusing on artifacts include the assumption that professors are unaware of racial
inequities and that they have yet to develop the agency to advance racial equity. As shown in this
dissertation research, professors’ social location, including their personal and professional
experiences, shapes how they enact their agency. The artifacts and activities provide the majority
of white faculty opportunities to develop a sense of purposeful agency for equity. For most white
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 173

faculty, data disaggregated by race helps them identify structures that perpetuate racial
inequalities. The majority of racially minoritized professors reference experiences with racism as
reasons why they are ready to advance racial equity at a systemic level. The agency of racially
minoritized professors is about their efforts to earn legitimacy within academia. From a cultural
historical activity theory perspective, faculty agency for racial equity can be situated into two
different activity systems. The majority of white faculty are negotiating their capacity to
understand issues of racial equity; hence, their agency being about intellectual and emotional
growth. The majority of racially minoritized professors’ agency is about managing emotions
associated with systems of power to sustain a learning environment about racial equity.
The three empirical studies from this dissertation offer substantial evidence that
professors’ social location informs faculty agency for racial equity. In each study, faculty
encounter different challenges. The type of problems faculty confront depends on their status in
each context. Although I provide multiple examples to illustrate the various ways professors
enact their agency, it is clear boundary work is necessary to advance racial equity. For example,
professors who are aware of campus politics intentionally collaborate with tenured professors (or
those with positional power) to strategize how to align racial equity with institutional values
(e.g., hire racially minoritized professors) and priorities (e.g., performance-based funding
metrics). Boundary work occurs when professors identify and reflect on the systems of power
with the intention to strategize how to advance racial equity (e.g., coordination and
transformation).
However, the focus on social location also provides opportunities to identify the
structures that facilitate and impede faculty agency for racial equity. Conversations about racism
on campus create tensions and anxiety among higher education practitioners (Hurtado & Harper,
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 174

2007). As highlighted in the literature on faculty agency, faculty perceptions of a supportive
environment shape their actions to advance racial equity. Having support from administration
and faculty colleagues helps professors challenge established structures of power. In addition to
support, knowledge about the racial campus culture is instrumental for faculty to identify their
options to advance racial equity in different units across the university.
Theoretical contributions
The current literature situates faculty agency for racial equity within the boundaries of
different worlds. These findings add a theoretical understanding of faculty agency for racial
equity by focusing on the dialectical relationship between professors’ social location and
structure. As a collective of empirical studies, this dissertation brings together boundary
crossing, boundary work, activity systems, and intersectionality to advance knowledge on faculty
agency for racial equity. Racial equity requires professors to engage in boundary work, by
managing and resisting systems of power, to identify their choices to advance racial equity.
Professors develop multiple strategies to advance racial equity, including those that reproduce,
negotiate, and transform structures.
The dissertation’s three empirical studies, each with its own data set, allowed me to apply
different conceptual frameworks to examine faculty agency from multiple theoretical
approaches. The conceptual framework also supports current research about faculty agency being
domain specific and the relationship between agentic perspectives and agentic actions (Campbell
& O’Meara, 2014). In the former, the focus on faculty advancing racial equity in different
contexts, including college campuses and areas of faculty life, supports that faculty agency for
racial equity is domain specific. Faculty experience the most success in transforming structures
in their own practices and in their own departments. In contrast they are less likely to change
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structures in spaces where they have less authority, which requires them to develop different
strategies to advance racial equity.
Finally, the findings advance current conceptualizations of faculty agency by highlighting
the multifaceted nature of agentic perspectives and agentic actions. Qualitative research,
primarily observations, open the window to see how agency is fluid throughout the events of one
activity. For example, over the course of faculty search committees, faculty move from using
strategies that seem to reproduce structures to negotiate the same structures to eventually
transforming the structures. Instead of using frequency (e.g., high or low) or type (e.g.,
transformative or not), I rely on critical (e.g., intersectionality), organizational (e.g., boundary
work), and sociocultural (e.g., activity system) theories to argue that there is a consistent
interaction between social location and structure that looks different in various contexts.
Implications
The summary and synthesis of the findings have implications for practice, policy, and
research. Professors play a significant role to help universities meet their espoused values of
racial equity (Bensimon, 2007). As illustrated in the three empirical studies, professors who are
committed and ready to advance racial equity encounter multiple challenges. When faculty
encounter resistance they rely on their sources of support, both at the administration and
professoriate levels, and knowledge of the campus racial climate. However, the boundary work
of professors to negotiate systems of power often goes unnoticed by university leaders who rely
on them to advance racial equity. In this section, I outline policy and practical implications for
university and college leaders to consider when investing resources to support professors
advancing racial equity.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 176

Implications for Faculty Training
For higher education leaders interested in attaining racial equity in representation and
outcomes, this study speaks to the value of providing professors with opportunities to interrogate
the campus racial climate, develop meaningful partnerships, and create multiple strategies. As a
starting point, higher education leaders should identify professors committed to racial equity.
The majority of professors committed to racial equity are invested in individual efforts to
advance racial equity through their research, service, and teaching. For this reason, higher
education leaders should acknowledge the individual efforts of professors and think about how to
move some of their efforts to a systemic level.
Knowledge about the politics of racism on campus aided professors’ boundary work to
identify their choices to advance racial equity. The value of having a space to interrogate and
disrupt the campus racial climate pays dividends in helping professors pragmatically move to
identify how to embed racial equity. So any institutional efforts to advance racial equity requires
the collection and use of institutional level data (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Bragg, McCambly,
& Durham, 2016; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015). This includes relying on quantitative data (e.g.,
data disaggregated by race) and qualitative data (e.g., stories about racism) to make informed
decisions. In addition to investing monetary resources for long-term interventions, higher
education leaders should be aware professors have different levels of experience with racism. As
it is true in the three empirical studies, inquiry provides opportunities for professors to name how
practices, policies, and cultures marginalize racially minoritized groups. However, racially
minoritized professors are more likely to have personal and professional experiences with being
marginalized and discriminated. Although not planned, the knowledge of racially minoritized
professors’ with racism helps transform inquiry into meaningful interrogations about the
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existence of racial inequities on campus. The sharing of stories with racism also surface the pain,
anger, frustration, and disappointment about the injustices racially minoritized groups have to
negotiate. Higher education leaders interested in addressing issues of racial inequity should be
prepared to manage the emotions associated with disrupting racism on campus. For this reason,
creating a team of professors who are committed to racial equity to participate in long-term
inquiry activities is significant considering that racial equity is not just an intellectual project.
Administrators should also compensate professors through stipends, release time (e.g., course,
committees), and service work.
Finally, higher education leaders should create opportunities for professors to learn about
each other with the intention of creating partnerships. Different faculty members hold various
levels of status across the multiple units on campus. Depending on their social location,
professors will encounter unique systems of power. A pre-tenured Latina professor advancing
racial equity in predominantly male department might experience systems of power associated
with her gender and professional rank. While a male tenured Black professor might experience
less resistance because of his status as a senior male professor. While the same two professors
can experience different challenges in a predominantly white male department. As part of the
training, higher education leaders should help professors create a supportive community. In
addition to creating a sense of community, higher education leaders need to be strategic about
which faculty will encounter the least resistance in specific spaces. Higher education leaders
would benefit from asking themselves: what are the micro-politics in each disciplinary
department and program office? What professor would be able to create a sense of trust in
specific areas? What professor will experience less resistance in specific areas?

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Implications for Policy
In the three empirical studies professors strategize ways to align their racial equity efforts
with university and departmental level policies. Administrative leaders play a significant role in
helping professors institutionalize racial equity. To align racial equity efforts with university and
departmental policies higher education leaders and professors need to change the rules,
community, and division of labor of the university. The normalization of race talk is crucial to
interrogate the racial campus culture throughout the multiple units. At an individual level,
administrators, faculty, and staff can ask themselves who benefits from the current structures,
practices, and culture. In addition to isolated events, higher education leaders should document
and vocalize the university’s racial equity efforts. For example, committees organizing faculty
retreats can develop workshops about racial equity. These workshops should not only inform a
university’s community about the importance of racial equity, but emphasize how practitioners
can advance racial equity. As part of the workshops, professors advancing racial equity can share
their experiences including the challenges they encounter and the strategies they use to overcome
resistance. In addition to sharing experiences, professors would be naming the systems of power
that minimize racial equity efforts for institutional change.
Governance committees, such as strategic planning, curriculum development, and tenure
and promotion, can also support racial equity efforts by integrating equity goals into policies to
encourage disciplinary departments and programmatic offices to implement racial equity. Such
policies help to legitimize professors’ efforts to talk about racial inequity and identify ways to
change practices that perpetuate such injustices. Although the policies themselves do not directly
change practices, it does help disrupt taken-for-granted norms by requiring practitioners to talk
about race.
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The development of policies about racial equity should be informed by quantitative and
qualitative data about the needs of racially minoritized groups. As seen in the findings,
professors use data to create equity goals with the intention to make practical changes. Any
efforts to institutionalize racial equity should be informed by institutional data to identify the
reasons for the existence of such injustices and to identify appropriate strategies.
Finally, higher education leaders should reward professors who implement racial equity.
This can be accomplished by publicly recognizing professors for their racial equity efforts. As
professionals, racial equity work should be professionalized and rewarded as service work for the
university and students. Ultimately, racial equity is intended to improve the conditions for
racially minoritized students (Bensimon, 2007). Institutionalizing racial equity requires for the
majority of professors to value such work and for tenure and promotion committees to
understand how to evaluate and reward such work. The alignment of racial equity with university
and departmental level policies is significant to communicate to the campus community the
importance of such justice values.
Implications for Future Research
Findings from this dissertation open an array of avenues for possible research. I focus
here on possible research into faculty agency for racial equity. All three studies emphasize how
professors interact with their environment to identify their choices to advance racial equity. As
part of their efforts, professors have to be reflective of the systems of power associated with their
social and professional identities. Although the dissertation took into consideration the identities
and emotions involved in racial equity, I did not explore the emotional labor and emotion work
involved in racial equity work. In chapter three, I highlight the different emotional responses of
professors to racism in their professional careers and practices. Although in chapter three I find
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 180

the role of emotions in racial equity, this dissertation did not focus on the emotion labor of
professors advancing racial equity. Emotional labor is the management of emotional displays as
part of one’s role at work (Grandey, Rupp, & Brice, 2015; Hochschild, 1983). However,
organizational change about race is intertwined with emotions such as anger, disappointment, or
frustration. Yet, as the findings illustrate, a number of professors manage their emotions to
engage in difficult discourses about racial equity. Future research on faculty agency for racial
equity should consider the role of emotional labor in organizational change. Survey
methodologies can help measure emotional labor in racial equity work and whether differences
exist between race, gender, and professional rank.
As illustrated in the findings, professors use various strategies to advance racial equity
when they encounter resistance from administration and faculty colleagues. A number of their
strategies rely on legitimizing racial equity in faculty life. For example, professors align their
social justice efforts with institutional values and missions which seem to be strategic attempts to
evoke or divert their colleagues’ emotions of racial equity. When faculty encounter resistance to
their equity efforts, they reference the support of the faculty body and senior administration to
regulate negative emotional responses to their equity efforts. Future research can further analyze
these findings by applying institutional work that incorporate the role of emotions in
organizational change (Creed, Hudson, Okhuysen, & Smith-Crowe, 2014; Moisander, Hirsto, &
Fahy, 2016; Voronov & Vince, 2012). Instead of focusing on how professors reconstruct their
experiences of racial equity work, researchers can focus on how professors change institutional
scripts with the intention to change how administrators, faculty colleagues, and staff feel about
racial equity.
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Finally, the professors in this study received institutional support to participate in this
inquiry-based intervention to advance racial equity. The reality is the majority of colleges and
universities will not have the capacity to invest monetary resources to train professors in long-
term interventions. If this is the reality, then what strategies do professors use to advance racial
equity in environments where they do not have the resources and leadership support to legitimize
their efforts? A number of professors throughout the three empirical studies are involved in
isolated efforts to advocate for racial equity. What motivates professors to engage in racial equity
work knowing their actions will not be noticed and rewarded?

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 182

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Appendices
Appendix A: Chapter Two Interview Protocol for Faculty Participants

Interview Guide for Participants in Data Use and Accountability Initiatives

This guide serves as a structure for interviews with staff, administrators, and/or faculty at
PASSHE universities who serve as participants in teams or committees associated with
accountability initiatives in the PASSHE university system (other than the Equity
Scorecard).This interview is intended to take roughly one hour and will be digitally recorded for
transcription. Respondents will be provided with a summary of their feedback as a member
check for validity and transparency purposes.

Introduction

Thank you for taking time to meet with me/us today. The purpose of this interview is to learn
about your experience participating in ___________[name of initiative/project]. This interview is
part of a research project funded by the Spencer Foundation to understand the factors and
conditions at post-secondary institutions that facilitate or hinder the use of data towards changing
educational practice, improving institutional effectiveness, and achieving equity in student
outcomes.

We have identified this project as one of several initiatives happening across this university and
the PASSHE system that have to do with equity in student outcomes, assessment, or other types
of accountability-related issues. We are interested in learning about your experiences
participating in this initiative and, specifically, what kinds of activities you engage in, what kinds
of data or other information you use in the course of your participation, and what you see as the
objectives and outcomes of this project/initiative.

During this interview we will therefore sometimes be asking you to provide us with specific
information just about how the initiative works and what you actually do in the course of your
participation in it. But at other points we believe it would be valuable to hear your own personal
perceptions and opinions about the goals and results of the project based on your experience. So
it’s important to emphasize that your participation in this research is completely voluntary, and
that all of your responses to these questions will be completely confidential. However,
PASSHE’s identity as the setting for this study will not be anonymous. At any point, you are
welcome to say that you’d prefer not to answer any of my questions or that you wish to stop the
interview altogether.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 203

With your permission, we will be digitally recording this interview so that we can accurately
transcribe it later on. Also, as we prepare our write-up of findings from the interviews, we will
provide you with a summary so that you can check to make sure we’ve captured your responses
accurately.

Do you have any questions before we begin?

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 204

****

I’d like to start off by asking some general questions about your role and responsibilities in your
current position. Then I’ll switch to asking you about your involvement in the _____ project in
particular.

1. General Information about the Respondent

a. Can you verify your current position and title?
b. How would you describe your main responsibilities in your current role?
c. Prior to this position, have you held other positions within this university or
elsewhere in PASSHE?
d. How many years total have you worked at this university?

2. Information about involvement in the Data-Use/Accountability Initiative
a. First, tell me a little about this initiative. When did it first start, and how long have
you been involved in it?
b. How did you first find out about this initiative?
[Probe for specificity]
c. If you can recall, can you describe briefly what your initial perception of this
initiative was—specifically, what is was “about” and why you in particular were
being asked to participate?
d. And how did your involvement come about, specifically? [If not covered in the
previous answer]. Did the president or provost or someone else approach about
participating? Did you volunteer?
e. [For faculty] Is participation in this initiative considered part of your service
responsibility as faculty?
f. How is this initiative funded? Are you aware if the university or the system
received a grant to implement it? Does this initiative have its own budget? Is it a
line in a university or departmental budget?
g. How long is this initiative expected to continue?
h. How many other people are involved in the project? What are their
roles/departments? [This may only need to be asked with one or two respondents
and afterwards just verified]
i. How well did you know the people involved in this initiative beforehand?

3. Information about the initiative’s objectives and processes
a. How would you describe, in your own words, the objectives of this initiative?
b. Are the objectives you just described listed explicitly somewhere or have you just
sort of come to understand them in the course of being involved?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 205

c. And if they’re different from what you’ve just described, what are your personal
objectives for participating in this initiative?
d. Okay. Can you describe for me in basic terms what you do as part of your
participation in this project/initiative? [Select from the following questions to get
as many specific examples as possible]
 Do you do independent work/research? How often and of what sort?
 Do you have meetings as a group? How often and with whom?
 Do you meet with administrators specifically? How often and about what?
 Do you meet with students specifically? How often and about what?
 Do you travel outside the university to present or learn about the issues
addressed in this initiative? How often and for what purposes?
 Do you write reports, memoranda, emails, or other communications?
About what and to whom?
 Do you collect, review, and/or analyze numeric data of any sort? What
sorts of data, how frequently, and for what purpose?
 Do you collect, review, and/or analyze qualitative data of any sort,
including interviews, observations, focus groups? With whom, where, and
for what purposes?
 Have you made or will you make recommendations to others in the
university about the work you’ve done as part of this initiative? To whom,
about what, and for what purpose?
 Can you describe any other specific activities that you engage in routinely
(daily, weekly, monthly) as part of this initiative?
e. [If not fully addressed in the above] Can you describe what forms of information,
evidence, or data you or the larger group has used in the course of your work?
i. Do you have a specific example of data/information you’ve used?
 Where did it come from/how was it collected?
 Did you look at this data/information more than once over the
course of the initiative?
 Can you describe for me, as specifically as possible, the process
that your group went through to analyze or make sense of the data
or information?
 Were there debates, arguments about what the data meant or how
to interpret them? If so, how were those resolved?
 What specifically did you do, recommend, change, etc. as a result
of analyzing and discussing this specific information/data?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 206

f. Can you describe what forms of information, including data or research or reports
of any kind, the group has produced or will produce as a function of this initiative
(if any)?
[If none, skip to item 3g]
i. What is the purpose of generating this information?
ii. What do you think is the intended audience of this information?
iii. In what ways do you think the information will actually be used in
practice? [Probe further here as needed]
 Are you confident that the information you produce will be used as
intended? Are you skeptical?
 If you are confident that the information has been or will be used
effectively, what do you think are the factors that made that
possible? (For example, does the president or provost take a
personal interest in this? Does it link to the university’s
performance-funding outcomes? Etc.)
 If you are skeptical that the information you are generating has
been or will be used as intended, what do you think are the factors
that inhibit its use by others?
 How do you or will you know if the information/data/evidence
you’ve generated in this initiative is used effectively to achieve its
objectives?
g. Other than (or if not) information or data, what outcomes do you expect the group
to produce as a result of this initiative? [Probe for specific examples]
h. How will the group/committee measure the success of this initiative?
i. How will the university measure success of this initiative, if at all?
j. For you personally, what would success look like for this initiative?
k. How will you know if it has been successful?
l. As a group, do you think you’ve learned anything from this initiative? What has
the group learned?
m. For you personally, if there’s something different than what you just described,
would you say that you have learned anything from this initiative? What have you
learned?
n. Has your perspective on the objectives and value of this initiative changed over
time? How so and why?

4. Information about diffusion and structures for continued learning
a. We’re interested in learning about the ways initiatives such as this one do or do
not become embedded in the university’s “culture” or regular way of doing
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 207

business.

Can you describe, for example, any specific policies within this university that
have changed as a result of this initiative? Which ones, and how do you know?
b. Can you describe any specific practices (e.g. admissions, outreach, faculty
development, training) within this university that have changed as a result of this
initiative? Which ones, and how do you know?
c. Do you expect that any of the information or data you have generated or plan to
generate as part of this initiative will continue to be collected and analyzed after
the initiative ends? [If applicable] Why or why not?
d. What would you describe as the president’s, provost’s, or other top
administrators’ attitudes about this initiative and its objectives?
i. [Probe further as needed] What indications do you have that they do or do
not care about it? Can you give specific examples?
ii. Have you heard the president, provost, or other administrator talk about
this initiative and its objectives in speeches or presentations to the whole
university or externally?
e. Do you find that you personally talk about this initiative, its objectives, or its
outcomes during your daily work outside of when you’re directly participating in
it? For example, in class, in faculty meetings, in unrelated committee meetings,
etc.?
f. Have you personally written any formal reports, presentations, memoranda or
other documents about this initiative, either for internal or external purposes?
[Could these be made available for us to review?]
g. Can you describe any resources that you requested and/or were given by the
university to support this initiative? [Probe for specificity]
i. Financial resources? [May have been covered in funding question above]
ii. Course release time or release from other work responsibilities?
iii. Access to support from secretaries, librarians, graduate or undergraduate
work study students, information technology, or institutional research,
etc.?
iv. Do you know if those resources have been made available on a recurring
basis, or was it a one-time expense/allocation?
h. Have you personally developed any working relationships with others from within
the university with whom you did not have a strong relationship before as a result
of this initiative? With whom and how so?
i. Have you personally developed any working relationships with others from
outside the university, at other universities in PASSHE or elsewhere, with whom
you did not have a strong relationship before as a result of this initiative? With
whom and how so?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 208

5. Relationship between the initiative and performance-based funding
Okay, we’re nearing the end. In this last few minutes, we’re interested in learning
a little about whether this initiative has any relationship with other similar
initiatives, the PASSHE system’s broader accountability framework, and in
particular the performance-based funding system.
a. How familiar are you with the performance-based funding model? Are you
familiar with the indicators that focus on access and student success? Can you
describe what those are?
b. Can you recall any ways in which you became aware of the performance-based
funding model and indicators? For example, were there specific meetings or
presentations you attended? Did you read any materials from the system office
about it?
c. From your perspective, how would you describe, generally, the PASSHE
system’s priorities related to accountability?
d. What about the PASSHE system goals for equity specifically?
e. From your perspective, have those goals changed over time?
i. In what ways and why?
f. From your perspective, what are this university’s goals for equity? How do you
know?
g. And have those changed over time?
h. Are you aware of any specific examples of communication between the system
office staff and staff or faculty in this university about equity in student access
and success?
 For example, meetings to discuss data on student outcomes or convenings
with all the universities where equity in student outcomes was the central
focus?
 [Probe for specific details] Could you describe the purposes of those
events? Who was involved? What were the outcomes or results?
i. With respect to the performance-based funding system generally, can you think of
any specific documents like reports or memoranda that the PASSHE system has
distributed within the universities describing the goals or outcomes of the funding
system?
j. And now with respect to other types of initiatives. Are you aware of—and/or do
you participate in—any other accountability initiatives, like this one, that involve
using data, examining student outcomes, making recommendations—anything
similar to this project happening at this university or others in the system?
k. Has your group, or any individual within it, ever met with groups or individuals
involved in this initiative or others from the other PASSHE universities? How
often? For what purpose? Who attended? What were the outcomes (if any) of that
meeting?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 209

l. From your perspective, is there any relationship between this initiative and those
others?
i. [Clarify question as needed] For example, has this initiative ever been
explicitly linked in reports or presentations to others?
ii. Have you gone to system-convened meetings where multiple initiatives
were discussed? If so, who attended and what was the purpose?
m. From your perspective, in what ways do the objectives of the various initiatives
you’re aware of align to or compete with each other?
i. Can you provide specific examples of ways in which they either align,
conflict, or compete?

That wraps up our questions. Thank you again for your time and participation in this research.
Again, we will be providing you with a summary of our write-up from this interview to ensure
that we have accurately captured your responses. Please do not hesitate to let us know if you
have any questions or concerns or other input you’d like to provide.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 210

Appendix B: Chapter Two Interview Protocol for Evidence Team Leaders

Interview Guide for Interviews with Equity Scorecard Team Leaders and Team Members
The Purpose of this Guide is to create a structure for interviews with PASSHE Equity Scorecard
team leaders and team members. The interviews are designed to gather data concerning team
members’ experience participating in the Scorecard’s action research process.
***********
During this interview we will mostly be asking you to provide us with specific information about
the design and implementation of the new performance-based funding model and/or initiatives
like Equity Scorecard and others. But at some points we believe it would be valuable to hear
your own personal perceptions and opinions about the goals and results of these initiatives based
on your experience and position within the system. So it’s important to emphasize that your
participation in this research is completely voluntary, and that all of your responses to these
questions will be completely confidential. However, PASSHE’s identity as the setting for this
study will not be anonymous. At any point, you are welcome to say that you’d prefer not to
answer any of my questions or that you wish to stop the interview altogether.

With your permission, we will be digitally recording this interview so that we can accurately
transcribe it later on. Also, as we prepare our write-up of findings from the interviews, we will
provide you with a summary so that you can check to make sure we’ve captured your responses
accurately.

Do you have any questions before we begin?
I am interested in learning about your involvement in the Scorecard.
How did you get involved in the Equity Scorecard?
 What were your expectations of participating in this process?
 Did it meet your expectations?
o Probe: in what ways? How so? (If no, Why not?)

4. What were your team meetings like?
 Did they go as you expected them to go?
 Was there anything you were apprehensive about participating in the team
meetings?

7. What are your feelings about the process of discussing and analyzing data in Equity
Scorecard meetings?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 211

 What are some things you’ve learned from discussions in these meetings?

8. Tell me about instances in which you had a chance to think about what you’ve learned through
the Equity Scorecard process outside of these experiences?
 What did you think about?

I’d like to review the current draft of your Equity Scorecard with you to get a sense of “the story
behind the Scorecard” and what you expect to happen next.
I. I have in front of me the following documents [describe them briefly]. To your
knowledge are these your most current Scorecard documents? [if no, ask to receive
the most up to date or additional documents].
II. Let’s start with the perspective that you feel was most completed, [retention &
completion | access | excellence].
Which one?
I see that you have [one|two|three] focal effort(s) are identified.
Let’s start by talking about the [first| second| third] focal effort. [select the one that seems most
comprehensively completed]
For Scorecards that do not have action plans and/or inquiry findings included in the most recent
perspective, adapt the questions by asking about what was learned and what was communicated
without reference to specific actions or recommendations.
This focal effort has a number of action steps associated with it. I’d like to get your sense of
how the team arrived at these recommendations. Let’s take the first one [name or describe it
using the language in the Scorecard Report]. Please tell me more about how this
recommendation was developed…
Prompt respondent using one or more of the following, depending on the initial response
You mentioned the team [took a certain inquiry step], who was involved in that?
What do you think motivated the decision to do that?
Probe for whether the decision was related to the Vital Signs or BESST data or
the identified equity gap or focal effort for the perspective.
For team members who were directly involved in the inquiry process
You mentioned that you were involved in this inquiry. Can you describe what you did?
Probe for the type of data collected through inquiry.
What did you learn from the data collected? How about the inquiry process?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 212

Probe for the relationship between what was learned and the findings of inquiry.
Are the “findings” related to the data? Does the respondent view the inquiry
process as one that generated “data”? Were there times when the group did not
agree on interpretations of data or inquiry findings, or saw something differently?
The Scorecard report has [one | several] recommendations in the action plan. How did the team
settle on [this | these] recommendations?
Probe for the relationship between the inquiry findings and recommendations.
Have you, personally, communicated these recommendations to colleagues? Campus
leaders?
Probe: How did you communicate the recommendations?
How were the recommendations received?
What do you expect to happen next now that these recommendations have been put
forward?
Prompt for more information about changes in roles and relationships that will facilitate
or produce knowledge about how to enact the recommendations.
Also prompt for more information about challenges or barriers to the recommendations.
I see the equity gap indicated on the Scorecard is [ refer to the numbers/percentages on the
Scorecard]. In your opinion, how does the action plan address this gap?
Probe for the relationship between data, information, knowledge, and action.
Probe if the action plan and response is not stated in terms of specific racial/ethnic
group(s).
The focal effort was focused on [African Americans | Latinos | Native Americans]; how does the
action plan aim to address the equity gap(s) that were identified on the Scorecard.
III. Let’s talk about the previous perspective your team completed, [access | retention &
completion]
From the Scorecard report, it looks like the team did [one | two | three] inquiry activities after
you looked at the Vital Signs. Is that right?
Prompt respondent using one or more of the following, depending on the initial response.
Note: This is the same as above; listen for differences in how they went about conducting
inquiry.:
Who was involved in those activities? Were you?
What did you do?
What did you learn from that?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 213

How did you communicate what was learned?
How were the inquiry findings received?
What do you expect to happen next now that you have made these recommendations?
Prompt for more information about changes in roles and relationships that will facilitate or
produce knowledge about how to enact the recommendations.
Also prompt for more information about challenges or barriers to the recommendations.
Probe if the action plan and response is not stated in terms of specific
racial/ethnic group(s).
I see the equity gap indicated on the Scorecard is [ refer to the numbers/percentages on
the Scorecard]. How does the action plan address this gap?
The focal effort was focused on [African Americans | Latinos | Native Americans]; how
does the action plan aim to address the equity gap(s) that were identified on the Scorecard?
Prompt for changes between the two perspectives in how the Scorecard team approached the
inquiry process:
I am interested in what you did and learned over time about doing inquiry. When you
compare the inquiry process of the two perspectives, what stands out in your mind?
Probe(s): Did you take a different approach as you became more familiar with the
data and the Scorecard tools?
Did you take a different approach as you became more familiar with the team
members?
By participating in the Evidence Team, what have you learned about using data and doing
inquiry that you didn’t know before the project? What kind of advice might you offer to others in
a similar role to yours (not PASSHE) if they were about to embark on a project like this?
Probe: How has your participation in the Scorecard changed how you conduct your daily work?
How you “see” data and inquiry? How (and with whom) you interact?
Based on their responses, prompt for more information on the who, what, and how of changes in
their knowledge and understanding of data use, and with what outcomes in terms of actions
based in knowledge generated from data use.
[Throughout, listen for dimensions of actionable knowledge we are interested in: inquiry
dimension (includes the logic model of data use and ongoing learning); the human dimension
(roles/relationships/communities of practice); the sociopolitical dimension (power, reputation,
institutional saga, resources). Listen for changes in organizational routines.]

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 214

Appendix C: Plot Example for Chapter Two
Appendix C

Plot example

One of the pieces that I still have a hard time getting my head around in terms of the way
that we are benchmarking percentages is just we are using the all percentage of their
benchmark. It’s a moving target. I think that was [the institutional researcher’s] frustration
is that we might never, ever see equity if we are using the all as the benchmark because it’s
moving. But what we were all able to do is decide that we were just going to put that piece
aside. That it wasn’t worth the fuss. That we could still make all the points the way we
needed to and we knew that depending on where the performance funding was going to
hone in was just being developed at that time – that those would be the calculations that the
university would actually care about in the end so we can show them all the gaps we wanted
but if they weren’t making their performance indicators they wouldn’t care about ours so
we decided it was a little bit – it belongs in a parking lot somewhere and not to derail our
process. I like the idea of benchmarking against all because I think it’s a nicer number
usually and it’s a nicer idea but it’s really hard to get your head around.

Plot elements
Initiating action One of the pieces that I still have a hard time getting my head
around in terms of the way that we are benchmarking
percentages is just we are using the all percentage of their
benchmark.
Complicating action(s) It’s a moving target. I think that was Lisa’s frustration is that
we might never, ever see equity if we are using the all as the
benchmark because it’s moving.
High point But what we were all able to do is decide that we were just
going to put that piece aside. That it wasn’t worth the fuss.
Resolution strategy(ies) That we could still make all the points the way we needed to
and we knew that depending on where the performance funding
was going to hone in was just being developed at that time –
that those would be the calculations that the university would
actually care about in the end

so we can show them all the gaps we wanted but if they weren’t
making their performance indicators they wouldn’t care about
ours so we decided it was a little bit – it belongs in a parking lot
somewhere and not to derail our process.
Ending I like the idea of benchmarking against all because I think it’s a
nicer number usually and it’s a nicer idea but it’s really hard to
get your head around.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 215

Appendix D: Chapter Three Recruitment Email
Good Afternoon,

The purpose of this email is to invite you to participate in my research study about your
experiences being involved in [Valley Oaks University’s] initiative to diversify the faculty body.
If you agree to participate, I would collect observation data during evidence team meetings and I
would interview you after the Center for Urban Education’s current work with [Valley Oaks]
comes to an end in November 2016. Your participation in the observations and interview is
voluntary. I would also like to ask for your permission to collect documents (e.g. faculty hiring
guidelines, job announcements) that were created or modified during, and as a result of, the
evidence team meetings as data for research manuscripts and dissertation work.

I will take measures to maintain your confidentiality when using data from observations,
interviews, and documents. I will do this by not using real names and using broad indicators to
describe faculty such as sciences for a faculty member in chemistry.

I have attached the informed consent form to this email. I will be reviewing this information
again at our September 30
th
team meeting. If you wish to learn more about my study please
contact me at rliera@usc.edu or at (818)-792-0267. Of course, your participation is voluntary
and if you wish to withhold your participation in any aspect of my study, please let me know by
responding to this email and I will not jot down notes that describe you or your behaviors during
my observations.

Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to hearing from you.

Román

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 216

Appendix E: Chapter Three Information Sheet

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 217

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 218

Appendix F: Information about Observation Data for Chapter Three
Appendix F
Observations from December 2015 to November 2016

Observation Date conducted Duration (Hrs)
Hispanic-Serving Institution
coordinator job talk
December 17, 2015 1
Winter 2016 faculty in service
retreat
January 19, 2016 2
Developing a balanced and
productive life (breakout
session)
January 19, 2016 1
The role of VOU to address
student protest (breakout
session)
January 19, 2016 1
Evidence team meeting #1 February 17, 2016 5
Evidence team meeting # 2 March 16, 2016 3
Evidence team meeting # 3 April 13, 2016 3
Evidence team meeting # 4 May 25, 2016 3
Evidence team meeting # 5 September 30, 2016 3
Evidence team meeting # 6 October 19, 2016 3
Evidence team meeting # 7 November 30, 2016 4
Search committee overview
with provost
August 26, 2016 1 ½
August 2016 faculty in-
service retreat
August 24, 2016 7
VOU as a Hispanic Serving
Institution (HSI) (breakout
session)
August 24, 2016 1
Total 14 38 hours and 30 minutes

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 219

Appendix G: Observation Protocol for Chapter Three
Name of Observer Date Time

Location Activity/Event

Observer Role
What am I doing?
What is my role?

How may my presence
affect the participants?

How does the activity
being observed relate
to the focal effort?

Space, Artifacts, and Presenters
Describe the physical
space and the setting
the activity takes place

Is there an agenda or
materials for the
event?
What are the artifacts
being used?

Someone facilitating
the meeting? Who is
it? What’s their role?

Participants and Activity
Who are the
participants?
-Administrators,
Faculty/Staff,
Students?

How many are there?

-Who’s represented?
(Representing specific
academic disciplines,
programs, etc.)

Can any demographic
characteristics be

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 220

identified among the
participants?
What are the
participants’ roles?

What are the
participants doing?
 Interaction among
participants
 Group power
dynamics
 Passivity/Activity

In what ways do
faculty members
describe their
involvement in
diversifying the
professoriate?
(Specific language,
presentations,
conversations)

General Observation Notes

Questions for reflection:
1) How do participants respond to each aspect of the session? Focus on specific people’s
reactions noting their race and ethnicity and what they say. Silences are also important.
2) Is there any indication of reflecting about practices?
3) Are there emerging patterns or themes about boundary crossing?
4) How does this observation help us understand boundary crossing?
5) Reconstruct one important exchange (e.g. interaction that epitomizes resistance). Write this up
as an actual dialogue.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 221

Appendix H: Interview Protocol for Chapter Three

Research Questions:

1) How do professors change their faculty recruiting and hiring process to be more
equitable?
2) Given the opportunity to do so, in what ways do professors establish a sense of agency as
change agents to integrate equity into faculty recruiting and hiring?
3) How do professors overcome challenges to institutionalize equity in faculty recruiting
and hiring?

Introduction
Thank you for agreeing to speak with me. As I explained in the initial letter, I am interested in
learning from your experiences as a faculty member involved in Cal Lutheran’s initiative to
diversify the faculty. In particular, I am interested in learning how you joined this initiative, what
this initiative means to Cal Lutheran and you, and how this initiative shaped your responsibilities
as a faculty member. The findings from this interview and others will be used for my dissertation
research and to write articles to submit to peer-reviewed journals.

In keeping with our commitment to the equitable conduct of human subject research we want to
emphasize that (Hand participant the informed consent form):
● The interviews are confidential. That means that in any materials that emerge from the
interview, you will not be identified. We will identify you as “participant.”
● You also have the option to withdraw from this interview at any point and to skip any
questions we ask. Remember that your participation is voluntary.

To help us capture and accurately represent your responses, we would like to audio-record this
interview. Do we have your permission to do so?

This interview should take about an hour.

Before we begin, do you have any questions for me?

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 222

Introduction
I want to start this interview by asking you to cast your mind back to when you first joined the
evidence team. We talked about the purpose of VOU working with CUE during the first evidence
team meeting to build equity in faculty hiring and retention…

1) What did building equity in faculty hiring and retention mean to you when you first
joined the evidence team?

2) Have the ways you talk about recruiting and hiring faculty members changed for you
since your participation on the evidence team? Your department? The university?

3) Have the ways you participate in recruiting and hiring faculty members changed for you
since your participation on the evidence team? Your department? The university?

4) Do you think that the changes that the evidence team made to the faculty search
guidelines will help the evidence team and VOU build equity in faculty hiring and
retention?

Follow-ups:
a) In what ways have you used the new faculty search guidelines?
b) What changes seem most promising?
c) How will they help build equity?

Now I am going to move into questions about your experiences with other team members.
5) What do you think is the groups’ stance on equity?
Follow-up:
a) How do you see yourself fit into the groups’ stance on equity?

6) Do you think that the evidence team developed a sense of collectivity?
a) How do you know it did or it did not?

7) Was the evidence team different from other service committees that you have served on
in previous years? In what ways was it different?

8) The first two evidence team meetings revealed, to some people, the negative experiences
faculty of color experience on campus. In March, this conversation took an emotional
turn about the burden of being a person of color on campus. What impact, if any, did this
moment have on the evidence team?
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 223

9) During your participation in the evidence team did you ever experience team conflicts?
Follow up:
a) What about personal conflicts?

10) Can you share with me something that stands out to you from your participation on the
evidence team? Why did this standout?

11) Tell me about any challenges that you experienced as a member of the evidence team.
These examples could describe evidence team meetings or situations outside evidence
team meetings. (Prompt for both type of examples)

Follow-up: In what ways, if any, did you address these challenges?
12) How would you describe these challenges that you experienced to your colleagues who
were not on the evidence team?

13) At any point during your participation in this initiative, did you question your
participation on the evidence team?

Follow up:
a) What made you decide to stay involved on the evidence team?

14) What did you learn from your participation on the evidence team?

Follow-up:
a) How did you learn (ask what they identified in the previous question)?

15) In closing, is there anything that you would like to ask me or share that we did not get a
chance to talk about?

Thank you for your time.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 224

Appendix I: Connecting Theory to Data Collection for Chapter Three
Connecting Theory to Data Collection

Theoretical Element Type of data element
is applied to
Example(s)
Inner contradiction Observations
Interviews
 Reconstruct one important exchange
(e.g. interaction that epitomizes
resistance). Write this up as an actual
dialogue.
 At any point during your participation in
this initiative, did you ask yourself
[mention questions they identified from
previous response]?
o What made you decide to stay
involved on the evidence team?
 Tell me about any challenges that you
experienced as a member of the
evidence team. These examples could
describe evidence team meetings or
situations outside evidence team
meetings. (Prompt for both type of
examples)
o In what ways, if any, did you
address these challenges?
 How would you describe these
challenges that you experienced to your
colleagues who were not on the
evidence team?
Activity system Observations
Interviews

 Do you think the changes that the evidence
team made to the faculty search guidelines
will help the evidence team and VOU build
equity in faculty hiring and retention?
o In what ways have you used the
new faculty search guidelines?
o What changes seem most
promising?
o How will they help build equity?
 The first two evidence team meetings
revealed, to some people, the negative
experiences faculty of color experience on
campus. In March, this conversation took an
emotional turn about the burden of being a
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 225

person of color on campus. What impact, if
any, did this moment have on the evidence
team?
 Was the evidence team different from other
service committees that you have served on
in previous years?
Agentic perspective Observations
Interviews
Documents
 Is there any indication of reflecting
about practices?
 What did building equity in faculty
hiring and retention mean to you when
you first joined the evidence team?
 Have the ways you talk about recruiting
and hiring faculty members changed for
you since your participation on the
evidence team? Your department? The
university?
 What do you think is the groups’ stance
on equity?
o How do you see yourself fit into
the groups’ stance on equity?
 Do you think that the evidence team
developed a sense of collectivity?
Agentic actions Observations
Interviews
Documents
 Are there emerging patterns or themes about
boundary crossing?
 How does this observation help us
understand boundary crossing?
 Have the ways you participate in recruiting
and hiring faculty members changed for you
since your participation on the evidence
team? Your department? The university?
 Tell me about any challenges that you
experienced as a member of the evidence
team.
o In what ways did you address
these challenges?

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 226

Appendix J: Plot Example for Chapter Three
Appendix J

Plot example

There are limits to it and I think it gives the administration some basis on which to say right
look you didn't adhere to the guidelines so this is a faulty search. Therefore we’re going to
stop it or start over or reconstitute the search committee with different people or whatever.
Right, so it gives some basis by which to evaluate the success of the search on equity
grounds and I think we just didn't have that before, just kind of a free for all actually
[laughs]. Yeah so you either had departments that cared about it or you didn't. Right, or
maybe cared about it but didn't really understand it or didn't really you know- I mean and I
think to have search guidelines that are not only attentive to the legal questions and to sort
of disciplinary process of hiring an academic. Right but the search guidelines that are
actually attentive to and informed by research and good research on equity and diversity
like that makes a big difference.
Plot elements
Initiating action There are limits to it and I think it gives the administration
some basis on which to say right look you didn't adhere to the
guidelines so this is a faulty search
Complicating action(s) Right, so it gives some basis by which to evaluate the success
of the search on equity grounds
High point Yeah so you either had departments that cared about it or you
didn't. Right, or maybe cared about it but didn't really
understand it or didn't really you know
Resolution strategy(ies) I think to have search guidelines that are not only attentive to
the legal questions and to sort of disciplinary process of hiring
an academic. Right but the search guidelines that are actually
attentive to and informed by research
Ending Good research on equity and diversity like that makes a big
difference

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 227

Appendix K: Recruitment Email for Chapter Four
Dear Dr. [Insert Name],

My name is Román Liera, and I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern
California’s Center for Urban Education. I am conducting my dissertation research on faculty
decision making during campus-wide efforts to racially and ethnically diversify the faculty body.
I want to understand how faculty members make difficult decisions while managing competing
demands.

I attended the Faculty Search Committee meeting that was facilitated by [name of provost] on
Friday, August 26, 2016, in [name of location]. Since this is a time when [Valley Oaks
University] is taking measures to diversify their faculty, I am interested in the possibility to
observe the search committee meetings that you chair. I am also reaching out to the other search
committee chairs. With your approval, I would like to reach out to the rest of the members of
your search committee.

The Institutional Review Board at the University of Southern California approved this research.
Attached, you will find a copy of the informed consent form for this study.
Sincere thanks for your time and consideration.

With my best regards,
Román Liera

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 228

Appendix L: Chapter Four Information Sheet

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 229

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 230

Appendix M: Connecting Theory to Data for Chapter Four
Connecting Theory to Data Collection

Theoretical Element Type of data element
is applied to
Example(s)
Critical Disturbance Observations
Interviews
 Reconstruct one important exchange (e.g.
interaction that epitomizes resistance). Write
this up as an actual dialogue.
 What was you experience?
 Was there anything VOU has done to
support you as an equity advocate?
Activity system Observations
Interviews

 Did you talk to the search chair about your
responsibilities?
 Did you observe any implicit biases? What
did you do?
 What would have happened if you were not
on the faculty search committee?
 Was there an individual on your faculty
search committee that you were able to
reach out for support? How about outside
the faculty search committee?
Learning Observations
Interviews
Documents
 Is there any indication of reflecting about
practices for the equity advocate? For the
committee as a whole?
 Are there emerging patterns or themes in
how individual faculty members discuss
faculty hiring? Are there any distinctions in
how the department talks about faculty
hiring?
Agency Observations
Interviews
Documents
 How do faculty members interact with their
colleagues about implementing artifacts to
racially diversify the faculty body? Focus on
specific people’s reactions noting their race
and ethnicity and what they say. Silences
are also important.
 How does this observation help us
understand patterns of boundary crossing?
 Did you know what your role was as an
equity advocate?
 What were you able to do now that you
were not able to do before?
 Do you think you made a difference?

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 231

Appendix N: Information on Observations for Chapter Four
Appendix N

Observations from October 2016 to April 2017

Observation Date conducted Duration (Hrs)
STEM search committee
meeting
October 11, 2016 20 minutes
Applied field search
committee meeting
October 18, 2016 1
Applied field search
committee meeting
January 27, 2017 1
Applied field search
committee meeting
February 1, 2017 1
Applied field search
committee meeting
February 2, 2017 1
Applied field search
committee meeting
February 2, 2017 1 1/2
STEM search committee
meeting
February 7, 2017 2
Applied field search
committee meeting
February 8, 2017 1
STEM search committee
meeting
February 16, 2017 3 1/2
STEM search committee
meeting
February 21, 2017 2 1/2
STEM search committee
meeting
February 23, 2017 2 ½
Applied field search
committee meeting
February 27, 2017 2
Applied field search
committee meeting
February 28, 2017 2
Applied field search
committee meeting
March 1, 2017 2
Applied field search
committee meeting
March 6, 2017 1
STEM search committee
meeting
March 8, 2017 2
STEM search committee
meeting
March 8, 2017 2
Applied field search
committee meeting with
provost
April 3, 2017 1
STEM search committee
meeting
April 3, 2017 2
FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 232

STEM search committee
meeting
April 5, 2017 2
STEM search committee
meeting
April 6, 2017 2
STEM search committee
meeting
April 7, 2017 2
STEM search committee
meeting
April 11, 2017 2
Total 23 meetings 39 hours and 20 minutes

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 233

Appendix O: Observation Protocol for Chapter Four
Name of Observer Date Time

Location Activity/Event

Observer Role
What am I doing?
What is my role?

How may my presence
affect the participants?

How does the activity
being observed relate
to the focal effort?

Space, Artifacts, and Presenters
Describe the physical
space and the setting
the activity takes place

Is there an agenda or
materials for the
event?
What are the artifacts
being used?

Someone facilitating
the meeting? Who is
it? What’s their role?

Participants and Activity
Who are the
participants?
-Administrators,
Faculty/Staff,
Students?

How many are there?

-Who’s represented?
(Representing specific
academic disciplines,
programs, etc.)

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 234

Can any demographic
characteristics be
identified among the
participants?

What are the
participants’ roles?

What are the
participants doing?
 Interaction among
participants
 Group power
dynamics
 Passivity/Activity

How do faculty
members describe
their involvement to
diversify the
professoriate?
(Specific language,
presentations,
conversations)

General Observation Notes

Questions for reflection:
1) How do faculty members interact with their colleagues about implementing artifacts to
racially diversify the faculty body? Focus on specific people’s reactions noting their race and
ethnicity and what they say. Silences are also important.
2) In what specific ways do faculty members enact their roles as boundary spanners? How does
this manifest itself?
3) Is there any indication of reflecting about practices for the equity advocate? For the
committee as a whole?
4) Are there emerging patterns or themes in how individual faculty members discuss faculty
hiring? Are there any distinctions in how the department talks about faculty hiring?
5) How does this observation help us understand patterns of boundary crossing?
6) Reconstruct one important exchange (e.g. interaction that epitomizes resistance). Write this
up as an actual dialogue.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 235

Appendix P: Interview Protocol for Chapter Four

Research Questions:
1. What are the experiences of professors advancing racial equity in faculty search
committees?
2. How do professors implement equitable practices during faculty search committee
meetings?
3. What challenges do professors encounter when advancing racial equity in faculty search
committees? How do professors overcome challenges to advance racial equity?
Introductions
Thank you for agreeing to speak with me. As I explained in the initial letter, I am interested in
learning how you experienced the process of being an equity advocate, any challenges that you
encountered, and what worked and did not work in helping you meet your responsibilities and
goals. I will use the findings from this interview for my dissertation research and write articles to
submit to peer-reviewed journals.

In keeping with our commitment to the equitable conduct of human subject research we want to
emphasize that (Hand participant the informed consent form):
● The interviews are confidential. That means that in any materials that emerge from the
interview, you will not be identified. We will identify you as “participant.”
● You also may withdraw from this interview at any point and to skip any questions we
ask. Remember that your participation is voluntary.

To help us capture and accurately represent your responses, we would like to audio-record this
interview. Do we have your permission to do so?

This interview should take about an hour.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 236

1) What was your experience?

2) Did you know what your role was as an equity advocate?

3) Did you talk to the search committee chair about your responsibilities?

4) What were you able to do now that you were not able to do before?

5) Did you observe any implicit biases? What did you do?

6) What would have happen if you were not on the faculty search committee?

7) Do you think that you made a difference?

8) Was there an individual on your faculty search committee that you were able to reach out
for support? How about outside the faculty search committee?

9) Was there anything Valley Oaks has done to support you as an equity advocate?

10) What were some of the things that you disliked about being an equity advocate?

11) What were some of the things that you liked about being an equity advocate?

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 237

Appendix Q: Examples of Codes for Observation Data for Chapter Four
Appendix Q

Examples of codes for observation data

Code Code description Code example
Bro code This code is about unspoken norms
among men when evaluating faculty
candidates and making hiring decisions.
This includes when male committee
members had playful relationships
before, during, and after the meetings. Or
when faculty candidates expressed a
sense of male privilege during the
interview process. Often these
conversations and interactions excluded
women and their experiences,
perspectives, or stories.
When faculty candidates asked
questions to the search committee the
search chair would look to the senior
white male for assurance and asked
him “[name of white male faculty] do
you have anything to add.” Similar to
most meetings, the search chair rarely
asked or looked at the other search
committee members for their input.

The search chair questioned the Latina
finalist’s teaching experience while he
emphasized the Asian male finalist’s
research experience even though the
male candidate had less teaching
experience than the Latina.
Research,
service,
and
teaching
as
proxies to
hit the
ground
running
This code describes the ways faculty
search committee members' interpreted
the administrative, research, and teaching
experience of faculty candidates as
proxies to determine which candidate can
meet the position's responsibilities with
minimal mentorship and guidance.
As the conversation continued about
the Asian male, the search chair
emphasized to the committee that “the
department is small and whoever we
hire needs to hit the ground running
because of the teaching and
administration responsibilities.”
Silencing
equity
advocates
This code is about the ways faculty
search committee chairs and members
who were not trained as equity advocates
prevented equity advocates from making
changes to any aspect of the hiring
process. This often happened when non-
equity advocates minimized the voices,
perspectives, knowledge, and presence of
equity advocates on the faculty search
committee.
Another striking point in this meeting
was the sear chair’s response to
Taylor’s request to video record the
research presentation. She said, “in
my searches I record the teaching
presentations so those can’t make it
can watch the presentations.” Taylor
made this comment because Leslie
was not going to be able to make the
research presentations.

FACULTY LEARNING AND AGENCY FOR RACIAL EQUITY 238

Appendix R: Plot Example for Chapter Four
Appendix R

Plot example

Well, the anxiety I think was mostly just wanting to make sure that I represented the CUE
team well. And that I represented the ideals that we were trying to accomplish. So, it wasn’t
anxiety it was nothing debilitating, it was just saying ... that's why I was glad another equity
advocate was there, because if I didn't catch something, I knew she would. And we also got
a chance during the process to be in communication with each other, which was helpful just
to say ... for us to get together, aside from the full committee, and say, "Are we doing
everything we need to do?" And that kind of thing. It wasn't huge anxiety, right? But it was
that kind of, "Oh gosh, I got a responsibility here."

Plot elements
Initiating action Well, the anxiety I think was mostly just wanting to make sure
that I represented the CUE team well

Complicating action(s) And that I represented the ideals that we were trying to
accomplish

High point That's why I was glad another equity advocate was there,
because if I didn't catch something, I knew she would

Resolution strategy(ies) And we also got a chance during the process to be in
communication with each other, which was helpful just to say
... for us to get together, aside from the full committee, and say,
"Are we doing everything we need to do?" And that kind of
thing

Ending But it was that kind of, "Oh gosh, I got a responsibility here"

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Equity researchers focus on how professors learn about the existence of racial inequities on their campus and how their practices perpetuate such injustices. From an agentic perspective, I argue that the interaction between professors’ social location and structure informs their strategies to implement racial equity. In three empirical studies, I use narrative inquiry to provide a unique look at how professors advance racial equity in various areas of faculty life. The first study draws upon interview data of faculty who were part of a larger group called on to broker structural changes to promote racial equity on their campuses. The findings illustrate that working across the “silos” of institutional boundaries to promote equity requires active negotiation of social differences across faculty roles (e.g., research, teaching, service). The second and third studies investigate the experiences of faculty who were part of their university’s effort to implement racial equity in faculty hiring. In study two, the findings draw on document, observation, and interview data to reveal how interrogating the campus culture provides faculty opportunities to use their critical knowledge and experiences with racism to advance racial equity in faculty hiring. In the third study, I analyze document, observation, and interview data to demonstrate how the intersecting social identities (e.g., race) and professional identities (e.g., rank) of professors are interrelated with systems of power that create unique challenges for individual faculty to advance racial equity. I conclude the dissertation with implications for practice, policy, and research on faculty agency for racial equity.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Liera, Román (author)

Core Title Faculty learning and agency for racial equity

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Urban Education Policy

Publication Date 08/07/2018

Defense Date 06/12/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag faculty agency,OAI-PMH Harvest,organizational change,racial equity

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bensimon, Estela (committee chair), Dowd, Alicia (committee member), Kaplan, Elaine (committee member), Posselt, Julie (committee member)

Creator Email rliera@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-58675

Unique identifier UC11672615

Identifier etd-LieraRomn-6680.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-58675 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-LieraRomn-6680.pdf

Dmrecord 58675

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Liera, Román; Liera, Roman

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA