Diverse academic faculty: A precious resource for innovative institutions

Abstract

Diverse academic faculty contribute unique perspectives and experiences that lead to creative growth of academic centers. Although the US population has become more diverse, academic faculty remain primarily heterosexual, able bodied, white, and male. These centers risk losing touch with the population at large and the issues they face. It is important to recruit and retain diverse academic faculty since they train future scientists and physicians who will make discoveries and apply treatments to the entire population. There is a paucity of data about diverse academic faculty and their unique additional stressors impacting on faculty health. In this chapter we discuss these stressors as they apply to race and ethnicity and faculty with disabilities. We also examine the important associations between marginalization, isolation, and silence experienced by diverse faculty and the stress that follows. © 2009 Humana Press.