What’s happening?
With a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, three local universities will work to diversify leadership roles in higher education.
How so?
The three-year grant will pay for 10 associate professors from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Morgan State University, and the University of Maryland in College Park to receive training to elevate their careers.
Most of the group will consist of women and people of color who have historically struggled to gain leadership positions and tenure in higher education. Currently, only 32% of college presidents are women and 14% are people of color, according to a report from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. Meanwhile, women represent 45% of provosts, 57% of vice provosts, and 45% of deans, while the percentage of people of color in these leadership positions hover in the mid-teens.
Anything else I should know?
As part of the program, the group will periodically visit all three campuses to see how their institutions’ structures differ, according to the initiative’s leader Kimberly Moffitt—the interim dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at UMBC.
You can learn more about Moffit and the program here.
