A Move Toward Greater Diversity in Deanships

Aimee Obidzinski, U. of Pittsburgh

When Valerie Kinloch was named dean of the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh, in July 2017, she did not know she was the first black female dean at the university. A former vice provost at Pitt who wanted to interview her brought it to her attention. “At first I was floored” by the news, she says, “and then that quickly became something that motivated me.”

Kinloch can now see how the university took 230 years to hire its first black woman as dean. Colleges in the United States, she says, “generally make assumptions about people who should have certain positions. And oftentimes, we don’t necessarily think that those people who are most qualified are black women.” She still sees a need for more-open conversations about racism, even as progress is being made in leadership. Since she was hired, Kinloch has gone from being the only black female dean at the university to being one of two, after Audrey J. Murrell was named acting dean of the Honors College.

Kinloch received her undergraduate degree from Johnson C. Smith University, a historically black institution in North Carolina, where she was immersed in an environment that encouraged her to think deeply about racial identities and blackness. She learned what it means to be part of a community and how one individual’s success can bring success to a community. She left the university “feeling as if I could do anything in the world that I wanted to do, even in the absence of adequate resources.”

It’s not just about who gets a seat at the table, she says, but “people who feel that they can’t be a part of conversations because they don’t belong in those narratives, in those meetings, in those stories. When in fact, they do.”

In research she did on race and literacy education while on the faculty at Ohio State University, Kinloch confronted the disparity between who makes decisions and who feels the impact of those decisions in education. “Our differences should not get in the way of our core commitments to improving educational conditions for all people, especially those who need us the most,” says Kinloch.

Kinloch succeeded a dean who had been in the post for more than 15 years. People were wary, she says, not necessarily of her but of change.

Within her first year as dean, Kinloch developed a new strategic plan for the School of Education. She has also started classroom and office renovations and a reorganization of departments. “The first phase of our renovations has proven that we need to figure out how to work better with each other and how to not just have better space, but make collaborative use of the space,” says Kinloch.

Black women and men have paved the way in other roles at Pitt to make her deanship possible, she says.

Thirty-five percent of education deans who responded to a survey by the Center for Academic Leadership in 1996-97 were women, and 15 percent were racial or ethnic minorities. By the 2015-16 academic year, nearly two-thirds of newly appointed education deans were women, according to The Chronicle’s Gazette listings. However, the “average” dean of a college of education, says a 2018 report by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, was a white woman.

Other fields, such as law schools, have made slower progress. In 2016, law schools were behind where education schools stood on gender equity in 1996, with only 30 percent of law deans being women.

At the University of Utah, Elizabeth Kronk Warner became the first woman and first Native American dean of the S.J. Quinney College of Law this year. Like Kinloch, she did not go into the job knowing that she was breaking new ground. When the news releases came out, she realized what her appointment meant. Knowing that she was the first did not change her approach to her new job, but it made her more aware.

“Anytime you’re the first of anything, there’s a little bit more responsibility because, in my experience, people will ascribe lack of success to gender or race if you don’t do well,” says Warner.

“For years, there weren’t as many women being educated in the law, and so there just wasn’t the pipeline for women to become deans,” she says. Warner recalls an alumnus telling her recently that he wanted to mentor more women but that some clients resist the notion of women taking the lead in cases.

Warner credits Stephen W. Mazza, dean of the law school at the University of Kansas, who is white, with mentoring her and other women. Two of her predecessors as associate dean for academic affairs at Kansas also went on to lead law schools: Melanie D. Wilson at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and Stacy L. Leeds at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

A member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Warner saw as she grew up how “the law touches you in so many ways that I don’t think other Americans experience, because we have a really unique relationship with the federal government.” She is excited to start building on the school’s existing Indian-law classes. With other members of the university community, Warner also plans to go on the road in the coming year for face-to-face meetings with members of tribes around Utah.

Warner is proud of the college’s inclusive senior administrative team. It is intentional, she says, and better decision making happens when people from a variety of backgrounds take part in the discussion. She praised Ruth V. Watkins, the university’s president, for her dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion at Utah. “There are many other women in leadership positions at the university that just make it a great place to work,” she says.

Outside the university, Warner has found a supportive community of other female law deans. She credits Kellye Y. Testy, former dean of the School of Law at the University of Washington and president and chief executive of the Law School Admission Council, with bringing those women together. Women, especially women of color, among law-school deans are a close cohort, she says.“It can be a lonely job,” she says, “so it’s very nice to know that you’ve got people in other similar positions who can provide some support.”

Women of color, Kinloch says, need institutional structures that support such coming together. “I’m hopeful that because we have more numbers of people of color in these roles, that we will be able to form the kind of community that we need.”

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