Joint WEPAN and ARC Network Webinar Series: Intersectionality, International Faculty and Inclusive Excellence

This session presented some of the findings based on interviews and focus groups concerning the perceptions of international faculty and panel speakers encouraging the importance of inclusive excellence in academia. 

Globalization and the transnational flow of faculty from international backgrounds have significantly added to the diversity and complexity of academia. International faculty bring a diversity of ideas to academia, as well as cultural values concerning gender and race from their countries of origin that may not be aligned with U.S. goals to increase the number of women in STEM. At FIU, many STEM faculty are Asian, Middle Eastern, or Eastern European men. Preliminary findings suggest that international STEM men faculty did not endorse the importance of hiring women and underrepresented groups much as U.S.-born men did. Departments with a greater proportion of foreign-born men also had fewer women faculty than departments with more U.S.-born men faculty.

This research suggests: (a) that the demographic characteristics of departmental faculty may pose a possible barrier to hiring and retaining women of color in STEM, and (b) that ADVANCE communities should take into account and address the intersectionality of international men faculty when offering programming.