Graves Hall at Morehouse College. (Photo by Thomson200.)
THE CARNEGIE CORPORATION of New York, The Rockefeller Foundation, and The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have distributed US$3 million in grants to three
historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the U.S., to support
faculty development. In November, Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, announced
that it would receive $500,000 from the Carnegie Corporation and
$500,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation. Morehouse College, also based in
Atlanta, received $1 million from the Carnegie Corporation. Prairie View A&M
University in Texas received $1 million from the Mellon Foundation.
The grants recognize the increasing difficulties that HBCUs face in recruiting
and supporting high-quality faculty in a competitive market, Spelman
College officials note in a statement. At the same time, HBCUs must build
strong faculties to educate the growing number of underrepresented minorities
pursuing higher education.
Spelman will use its funding to support curriculum development, award
research grants, design training for junior and mid-career faculty, and host
off-campus faculty retreats where professors can work on scholarly and creative
endeavors. “We anticipate using a portion of the funds as well to document
and disseminate the innovative teaching strategies that have accounted
for the academic success of Spelman students,” says Mary Schmidt Campbell,
president of the college.
At Morehouse, the funds will support a new initiative, Modeling 21st-Century
Faculty Development at HBCUs, which aims to reduce the teaching loads
of existing faculty, support them at
critical stages of their career cycles,
and increase their research productivity
via sabbaticals, seed funding, and
workshops. Morehouse will document
the program’s success through metrics
such as the number of faculty applying
for full professorships, the number of
applications to posted job openings,
and the frequency of grant applications
and manuscript submissions.
Prairie View will use its funding to
identify effective practices in faculty
recruitment, advancement, and retention,
as well as to establish a Center
for Faculty Excellence. The center will
track and monitor scholarly output
and professional engagement across
its programs.
As a condition of the grants, the
three HBCUs are required to share best
practices in recruiting and retaining
faculty, both with each other and with
the broader HBCU community.