In the fall of 2014, Boston University’s Institutional Research department reported that 332 faculty members were “members of minority groups.” In the fall of 2016, this statistic was reported to be 334, an increase of just two in four years.
Travis Bristol, a professor of educational leadership and policy studies in the School of Education, has spent the last several years conducting research on the treatment and role of black male teachers in the workforce. His paper, “Policing and Teaching: The Positioning of Black Male Teachers as Agents in the Universal Carceral Apparatus,” was published in The Urban Review this month.
Bristol’s research has focused solely on non-collegiate teachers. He found that in Boston, the hiring of black male teachers is concentrated in the most challenging schools in the city. Retaining these minority teachers is one of the main points of importance in Bristol’s work.
“Those schools have the most challenging working conditions,” Bristol said. “Bringing them to these schools is not enough. They’re going to leave these schools if they don’t have the necessary resources like other teachers.”
The environment in which these educators work is both “hostile” and “challenging,” Bristol said. A majority of the teachers in his research reported encountering microaggressions in their schools. Specifically, many felt type-cast by their school’s administrations.
Bristol said that according to the Schools and Staffing Survey, which provides data on a wide variety of elementary and secondary school-related topics, black teachers leave the workforce at higher rates than their peers. He is not sure if this same trend exists and the collegiate level.
Crystal Williams is the associate provost for diversity and inclusion at BU. Williams was hired last fall and is the first person to hold that position. She said the university is on its way to creating a more diverse and inclusive faculty body.
“The University is soon to undertake a new strategic planning process, and diversity, equity, and inclusion will be one of the central pillars in that plan,” Williams wrote in an email.
BU plans to integrate the most “ambitious” new ideas of equality into next year’s strategic plan. Williams wrote that this will encourage further diversification of faculty in the coming years.
“I’m equally excited to begin working with the deans and faculty within the schools to create and implement a University-wide strategy that will move us more quickly to align our practices with our stated values,” Williams wrote.
Diversity is vital to BU’s position as a university with world-class faculty, Williams said. Having a faculty body that is diverse not only in race, but also in gender, religion and general background, is a crucial aspect of effective critical thinking and problem solving.
“When a diverse range of humans are engaged in problem-solving together, the multiple perspectives we bring to that problem enhance our ability to identify, address, and solve the problem.” Williams wrote. “All knowledge and fields of research benefit, expand, and become more interesting when the questions posed are themselves expansive and broad.”
Bristol said BU’s decision to hire a diversity provost was an “important signal,” as diversity of educators is not only important to the institutions that employ them, but also to the students they foster.
“You have to think about how to improve the schools, think about the resources that are in the schools, the training that the principals may have, the training that teachers may have,” Bristol said.
