Task forces say minorities, women underrepresented
From the introduction to two reports released yesterday by Harvard's task forces on women:
In spite of more than three decades of concern, Harvard has made only limited progress in its efforts to create a genuinely diverse faculty. Women and minorities remain significantly underrepresented in relation not just to their proportions in the broader population, but in comparison to their presence in the student body of Harvard's ten Schools and, in many cases, to their numbers in the pool of PhDs in individual academic fields. . .
The Task Forces have worked to identify how Harvard can build and nurture the very best faculty. A diverse faculty is a strong faculty because it emerges from the broadest possible consideration of available talent, talent that Harvard as an institution and a community must encourage and sustain throughout the varied stages of academic careers. The development, recruitment, and support of outstanding faculty, issues which have been at the heart of the Task Forces' deliberations, provide the essential foundation of a great university.
From the report of the task force on women in science and engineering:
At the undergraduate level, the attrition rate from science concentrations is greater for women than for men. According to the Office of the Registrar, in the graduating class of 2004, 47.9 percent of men, as compared to 42.1 percent of women, who entered Harvard with expressed interest in a natural science concentration actually graduated with a degree in natural science. . .
Meetings with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows also made it clear that environment continues to be a problem in some departments. To sustain interest throughout graduate school and postdoctoral fellowships, women need to feel respected in a collegial department environment.
From the report of the task force on women faculty:
There is an overall need for comprehensive data on women and underrepresented minorities at the university and by school. Although we have basic faculty demographic data . . . there is no consistent approach to measuring gender and racial/ethnic equity at the university, or to tracking progress in increasing the representation of women and underrepresented minorities among faculty. In addition, little or no hard data exists on the overall climate for women and underrepresented minority faculty in their respective schools/departments. Experiences of other institutions in the area of data collection underscore the critical role of data in effecting long-term cultural change. A data-driven approach lends credibility to various issues rather than allowing them to be dismissed as anecdotes and enables richer, more open and less confrontational discussions with university and departmental leadership about causes of and potential solutions to identified issues.
