Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
A diverse group of raised hands above a university building

Race on Campus

Engage in higher ed’s conversations about racial equity and inclusion. Delivered on Tuesdays. To read this newsletter as soon as it sends, sign up to receive it in your email inbox.

March 2, 2021
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email

From: Sarah Brown

Subject: Race on Campus: How One Campus Nearly Doubled Its Black Faculty

Welcome to Race on Campus. Last week we told you about the pipeline problem that colleges face when trying to diversity their faculty ranks. This week we’re sharing a success story. Sarah Brown writes about how one college diversified its faculty by, in part, financially supporting departments that showed diversity in their hiring pools.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Welcome to Race on Campus. Last week we told you about the pipeline problem that colleges face when trying to diversity their faculty ranks. This week we’re sharing a success story. Sarah Brown writes about how one college diversified its faculty by, in part, financially supporting departments that showed diversity in their hiring pools.

If you have ideas, comments, or questions about this newsletter, write me: fernanda@chronicle.com.

Most predominantly white colleges have struggled for decades to increase the racial diversity of their faculty members. Over all, people of color make up just over one-fifth of the professoriate, compared with nearly half of undergraduates.

But the University of North Carolina at Greensboro is on its way to becoming a success story. From 2015 to 2020, the number of Black faculty members there nearly doubled, the number of Hispanic faculty members rose about 50 percent, and the number of Asian faculty members increased by about 25 percent. As a whole, the share of white professors declined to 72 percent from 81 percent.

Between 2015 and 2020, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro nearly doubled its number of Black faculty members.
Between 2015 and 2020, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro nearly doubled its number of Black faculty members.The Chronicle

There’s no flashy multimillion-dollar campus initiative. No declaration of an ambitious faculty-diversity goal. There’s no chief diversity officer. There’s not even a standalone diversity office. So how did the campus do it?

UNC-Greensboro is in some ways better situated than other colleges for increasing its faculty diversity. Enrollment has been growing, so there have been more opportunities to hire professors. The local population is racially diverse, and so is the student body. But UNC-Greensboro is also a non-flagship public university without lots of money or a huge national brand.

UNC-Greensboro’s success so far proves that diversifying the faculty doesn’t stem from pomp and circumstance. It results from years of hard work by faculty members advocating for change in their departments and leadership that makes a real commitment.

Much of the progress comes down to resource allocation and messaging, says Frank Gilliam, the university’s first Black chancellor, whose tenure began in 2015. If departments want to secure additional funding and resources from the chancellor and the provost, they must, for instance, ensure that their candidate pools are diverse.

“The bus is leaving the station,” Gilliam tells the campus community. “And either you’re on it or you’re not.”

Gilliam’s leadership set a strong tone, but it took many other people to get UNC-Greensboro to where it is now. Like Andrea G. Hunter, a professor of human development and family studies. Hunter is a chancellor’s fellow for campus climate and serves in Gilliam’s cabinet. She spends about half her time working on campus diversity efforts — promoting self-awareness and engagement with anti-racism through workshops and training, determining which campus policies and procedures undermine equity, and ensuring there’s assessment and accountability.

Hunter has seen 20 years of evolution in her department. Progress required curricular reform, training, and a lot of deep, reflective conversations to make sure professors understood the experiences of students and faculty members who didn’t look like them, Hunter says. And it required disrupting the informal practices, such as promoting job openings only within narrow professional networks, that tended to replicate the professors who were already there.

Her department’s faculty is now about one-third people of color, and a Black woman just became the chair. Diversity has made the department better, Hunter says. The quality of the faculty-applicant pool has improved. UNC-Greensboro’s program in human development and family studies is now among the top five nationwide, she says.

Hunter is now trying to promote that kind of change across the campus. She had been in the Faculty Senate leadership for several years, and planned to take a step back from service in 2020. But then Gilliam asked her to serve in this new role right after George Floyd’s death. “I felt the weight of the historical moment,” Hunter says.

Other departments are still lagging behind on racial diversity, but Hunter is optimistic. She wouldn’t have stayed so long, she says, “if I didn’t believe in what was possible here.” Her sense is that people believe in the university’s commitment to racial equity.

That commitment won over Sherine O. Obare, who is the first woman of color ever hired as a dean at UNC-Greensboro. Obare leads the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, which is a partnership with North Carolina A&T State University, a historically Black institution in Greensboro. She had gone on campus visits elsewhere, and sometimes felt a wave of tension when she, a Black woman, entered a space. “You can just read the room, and you’re like, Oh, people are just not very comfortable here,” she says.

At UNC-Greensboro, in non-pandemic times, people from different backgrounds sit with one another, having lunch, catching up, talking, laughing, Obare says. There are places for people of different faiths to pray on campus. The university’s Black faculty and staff group frequently hosts brown-bag lunches with no particular agenda — just to create a hangout space. “You just feel like the culture is really inviting and accepting,” she says.

That environment reflects what Gilliam calls “threshold” effects. At a certain point, he says, an institution finally has enough diverse voices that decision-making and culture start to change.

Gilliam draws a distinction between descriptive representation and substantive representation. Descriptive representation, he says, happens when there’s one person of color here, and another one over there. One of them might end up on a committee, on a board, or in the president’s cabinet. In such situations, the best they can typically do is prevent something from happening. They can’t advance any new ideas. Substantive representation, meanwhile, looks more like UNC-Greensboro, he says.

Once that kind of threshold is reached, someone might still be the only Black person in one particular room, whether it’s a classroom or a boardroom. But when that person leaves the room, he or she can see many other Black people elsewhere on campus. That kind of progress, Gilliam says, brings “a tremendous psychic benefit for students and for faculty.”

UNC-Greensboro is among more than a dozen institutions featured in a new Chronicle report that examines how to increase the racial diversity of faculty, staff, leadership, and governing boards. —Sarah Brown

Read up.

  • Update: Last year, Jonathan Holloway, historian and president of Rutgers University, said that he would not change the university’s name. Rutgers is named for a slaveholder. Instead, he wanted to place contextual plaques on buildings named for “complex” figures, a university spokeswoman told us in November. Holloway is getting his markers. Here’s a list of the signs and what they will describe. (NJ.com)
  • In 2018, a Black student at Smith College was eating her lunch in a dorm lounge when a police officer and janitor approached her to ask what she was doing. Months later, a law firm hired by the college found no evidence of bias. But tensions over race and class still abound at Smith. (The New York Times)
  • For years, Alabama omitted details of its racist past. By pushing these stories aside, Adam Harris writes, America rejected opportunities to improve race relations. (The Atlantic)
  • Many Black and Latino communities saw unemployment and the coronavirus ravage their communities last year. When a winter storm pummeled Texas last month, these residents and their neighborhoods were especially vulnerable to the power outages and low temperatures. (Texas Tribune)

—Fernanda

Tags
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Vector illustration of large open scissors  with several workers in seats dangling by white lines
Iced Out
Duke Administrators Accused of Bypassing Shared-Governance Process in Offering Buyouts
Illustration showing money being funnelled into the top of a microscope.
'A New Era'
Higher-Ed Associations Pitch an Alternative to Trump’s Cap on Research Funding
Illustration showing classical columns of various heights, each turning into a stack of coins
Endowment funds
The Nation’s Wealthiest Small Colleges Just Won a Big Tax Exemption
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists

From The Review

John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson
Vector illustration of a suited man with a pair of scissors for a tie and an American flag button on his lapel.
The Review | Opinion
A Damaging Endowment Tax Crosses the Finish Line
By Phillip Levine
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin