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The Lived Experience of Minority Nursing Faculty: A Phenomenological Study
THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF MINORITY NURSING FACULTY: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY FOLASADE M. KOLADE, DNP, MLS, RN The lived experience of full-time nursing faculty has recently been detailed. However, similar information is not available about minority nursing faculty. The purpose is to explore the lived experience of minority nursing faculty. The design is a phenomenological study. Five female faculty with 8 to 13 years of experience in a full-time position shared experiences through faceto-face interviews. A simplified version of Hycner's five-step explicitation process was used for interpretation and data analysis. Six themes emerged—missing mentorship, lack of collegial support, harnessing external support, acculturation, feeling isolated, and I feel more like a minority here. Minority nursing faculty face challenges similar to minority faculty in other disciplines in higher institutions. However, acculturation has not been discussed in phenomenological studies of similar populations. These findings have bearings on strategies for increasing minority nursing faculty and assessing mentoring practices in nursing programs. (Index words: Nursing faculty; Nursing education; Mentors; Acculturation; Qualitative research) J Prof Nurs 32:107–114, 2016. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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ATIONAL COUNCIL OF State Boards of Nursing data show that nursing faculty in the United States (US) are 87% Caucasian (Budden, Zhong, Moulton, & Cimiotti, 2013). The underrepresentation of minorityrace nursing faculty portends a shortage of role models for minority students, which can undermine the efforts of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing to increase minority enrollment in nursing education programs (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2008). There is a need to recruit and retain minority faculty in order to promote race-concordant mentoring of minority students who desire such experiences. Academe has a unique culture that is not easily changed, a set of unspoken and unwritten beliefs and assumptions that guide individual and collective behavior (Trower & Chait, 2002). The existence of a dominant culture within a group of faculty members challenges minority members to adapt in one of several ways in order to maintain individual accomplishment or achieve group collaboration (Cuyjet, 2008).
Address correspondence to Folasade M. Kolade: Assistant Professor of Nurse Education, Elmira College, 1 Park PL, Elmira, NY, 14901. E-mail: [email protected] 8755-7223
The literature on minority nursing faculty has hitherto focused on their distribution across the US and recommended strategies for their recruitment and retention (Godfrey, 2005; Stanley, Capers, & Berlin, 2007). This study explores the experience of minority nursing faculty in the context of higher education faculty culture.
Theoretical Framework The LaFromboise model of bicultural competence focuses on the cognitive and effective processes that allow individuals to withstand acculturative stress (LaFromboise, Coleman, & Gerton, 1993). The foundation for this framework is the alternation model of second-culture acquisition, which assumes that it is possible for an individual to know and understand two different cultures. Alternation is the ability to function effectively in another culture while still maintaining the original culture, such that the individual alternates as necessary between the original and newly acquired culture. It is a valuable strength for a minority faculty member who can thereby exercise all aspects of his or her cultural identity and enhance mentorship for mentees of diverse racial or cultural backgrounds. Achievement of bicultural competence is based on development in six dimensions: knowledge of cultural beliefs and values, positive attitudes toward minority and majority groups, bicultural efficacy, communication ability,
Journal of Professional Nursing, Vol 32, No. 2 (March/April), 2016: pp 107–114 © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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role repertoire, and a sense of being grounded (LaFromboise et al., 1993). In order to achieve this, an individual needs to accept each culture's world view and develop an ability to act within that context when interacting with members of that culture. When the values of both cultures conflict, the individual may internalize the conflict in order to find resolution or fuse both cultures to reduce stress. Holding positive attitudes toward both majority and minority cultures is based on the assumption that the individual recognizes bicultural competence as a desirable goal and holds each culture in positive, even if not equal, regard (LaFromboise et al., 1993). Contact with the culture is a necessary tool to develop positive feeling toward it; this is influenced by the type and length of contact. Information from other persons of one's own culture that have succeeded in dual socialization can prove invaluable. Bicultural efficacy is the confidence that one can live effectively in a satisfying manner within two groups without compromising one's cultural identity (LaFromboise et al., 1993). Having this belief will support an individual through the challenges of developing and maintaining effective support groups in both minority and majority cultures and enable one to persevere in times of rejection from one or both cultures. Communication ability refers to the effectiveness of an individual in communicating ideas and feelings to members of a given culture, both verbal and nonverbal; language competency may be a major building block of bicultural competence. According to LaFromboise et al. (1993), role repertoire refers to the range of culturally or situationally appropriate behaviors an individual has developed; the greater this range becomes, the higher the level of cultural competence attained. A sense of being grounded comes from the establishment of stable social networks in both cultures; it enhances an individual's ability to cope with the pressures of living in a bicultural environment. One must have skill to recruit and use external support systems in order to be culturally competent. In addition, the model of cultural competence in health care delivery (Campinha-Bacote, 1999, 2002) posits that there is a direct relationship between the level of competence of health care providers and their ability to provide culturally responsive services. Cultural competence is thus a process, not an endpoint, in which the nurse continuously seeks the ability to work within the cultural context of an individual, family, or community from a diverse cultural/ethnic background (CampinhaBacote, 2002). Five constructs the nurse has to assimilate to become culturally competent are cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skill, cultural encounter, and cultural desire. Cultural awareness is a process whereby the health practitioner conducts a self-search and an in-depth exploration of one's own feelings and biases toward other cultures (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). It also includes awareness of one's cultural and professional background. Cultural knowledge is attained when the health care professional seeks and obtains sound information regarding variations of culture (Campinha-Bacote, 2002).
FOLASADE M. KOLADE
Cultural skill is the ability to conduct a cultural assessment; a cultural encounter occurs when there is encouragement to directly engage in face-to-face cultural interactions and other types of encounters with people from culturally diverse backgrounds in order to modify existing beliefs about a cultural group and to prevent possible stereotyping. Cultural desire assesses the motivation of the health care professional to engage in the process of becoming culturally aware (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). When all these processes are completed, the individual would become culturally competent to function appropriately in a different culture. Nursing faculty are in a central position to influence health care because they become culturally competent themselves; nurses taught by such faculty will be empowered to work optimally with patients of diverse cultural backgrounds. These conceptual frameworks share some descriptors of the process of achieving cultural competence. For instance, “knowledge of cultural beliefs and values” (LaFromboise et al., 1993) equates to “cultural knowledge” (Campinha-Bacote, 2002), and cultural desire (CampinhaBacote, 2002) is founded on a positive attitude about that culture (LaFromboise et al., 1993).
Literature Review Johnsrud and Sadao (1998) used phenomenology to explore day-to-day experiences of minority faculty members with their colleagues, department heads, and deans. The 22 participants represented 16 minorities (i.e., Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hawaiian, Filipino, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander). Three distinct but related experiences emerged as common across ethnic and racial minority groups: (a) the bicultural stance minority faculty are likely to cultivate, (b) the ethnocentrism they perceive on the part of White administrators and faculty, and (c) the discriminatory behavior they experience as minorities. The participants described a sense of “otherness,” a difference they found stressful and draining. Minority faculty were likely to cultivate biculturalism but perceived that majority faculty had low desire to do likewise. Although this study was conducted at a university where 31% of the faculty—and 76% of the students—are of minority race, minority faculty perceived that they experienced the academy differently than their White counterparts. Turner (2002) interviewed four Asian Pacific American, 15 African American, four Native American, and eight Latino tenured female faculty at unnamed colleges. Themes identified in this phenomenology study include feeling isolated and underrespected; salience of race over gender; being underemployed and overused by departments and/or institutions; being torn between family, community, and career; being challenged by students; and having a sense of accomplishment (Turner, 2002). Many respondents felt a need to leave their perceived identities at the doorstep of the tenure process. A nationwide mixed methods study of 41 African American counselor educators revealed that, regardless of
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gender, these faculty felt that they had excessive diversity-related service/committee demands from their departments and colleges (Bradley & Holcomb-McCoy, 2004). All participants reported lack of collegial support from colleagues in their department and lack of mentorship for navigation of the tenure process; a few had received mentoring and encouragement from senior African American faculty outside their department. Twenty-nine full-time tenure-track physicians at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine participated in a phenomenological exploration of the perceptions of majority and minority faculty regarding cultural diversity in academic medicine (Price et al., 2005). African Americans, Mexicans, mainland Puerto Ricans, or Native Americans were classified as underrepresented minorities (URMs). Three focus groups were convened: physicians of different ethnic backgrounds (mixed group), URM physicians (URM group), and ethnic majority physicians (majority group); 12 interviews (9 URM, 3 majority; 6 males, 6 females) were also conducted. The participants identified several potential explanations for underrepresentation of minorities: a nonwelcoming environment, lack of role models or mentors with whom they can identify, lack of prior educational opportunities, poor recruitment efforts, and educational debt (Price et al., 2005). At another medical school, 36 URM faculty members were individually interviewed on their experiences as minorities, perspectives on diversity, and recommendations for improvement. The participants included 20 women, 17 African Americans, and 10 full professors. Four major themes emerged: choosing to participate in diversity-related activities, driven by personal commitment and institutional pressure; the gap between intention and implementation of institutional efforts to increase diversity; detecting and reacting to discrimination; and a need for a multifaceted approach to mentorship, given few available minority mentors (Mahoney, Wilson, Odom, Flowers, & Adler, 2008). Eight full-time, female baccalaureate nursing faculty of undisclosed race participated in a phenomenological study intending to discover what it is like to be a nursing faculty member; the findings included five themes (Gazza, 2009). All participants described their jobs as busy but rewarding in terms of making a difference in the world of their students and being able to touch lives indirectly as gatekeepers of the nursing profession. The participants sought various ways to balance all of their roles at work and between their work and nonwork roles. They, however, reported lack of mentorship and support, which they considered very important. The study also described good, bad, or ugly workplace relationships with fellow faculty and program administrators.
Methodology A phenomenological study was conducted to explore the research question: What are the lived experiences of minority nursing faculty?
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Population, Sample, and Recruitment Procedures The population of interest was minority nursing faculty members. In the US, an ethnic or racial minority is an individual who has self-identified as having either an American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, or Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander heritage (Centers for Disease Control, 2009). Inclusion criteria included fulltime faculty members with the rank of assistant, associate, or full professor who self-identified as an ethnic minority and who had taught in an accredited baccalaureate nursing program for 1 or more academic years. Sample recruitment was achieved through purposive and snowball techniques that began when administrators of accredited baccalaureate nursing programs in a southeastern state were contacted to identify their minority faculty members. The programs were selected so as to be within geographic reach of the author, then a graduate student, who drove up to 210 miles one way to conduct the interviews. Potential participants were invited directly via e-mail, telephone, and face-to-face contact. Participants were asked to provide names and contact information of other faculty that may meet inclusion criteria. The Daemen College Human Subjects Research Review Committee approved the study protocol. Participation was strictly voluntary, and informed consent preceded each interview.
Interviews Data were collected in 2010 during face-to-face interviews that were conducted in comfortable locations mutually agreed upon by the participant and interviewer. At start of each session, all study participants were advised that interviews could last 45–60 minutes. A 10-item demographic survey was completed. All interviews were audiotaped, and field notes were recorded individually. Field notes were matched with each interview and were assigned a unique identifier. Informant-directed interview sessions were started by asking the grand tour question, “What has your experience been like as a nursing faculty?” Follow-up questions are listed in Table 1. Informants' leads were followed with additional reflecting or prompting questions as needed.
Treatment of Data Each interview recording was transcribed by a transcriptionist and analyzed separately by the author using a simplified version of Hycner's five-step explicitation process (Groenewald, 2004), as outlined below. Bracketing involved conducting the interviews and data analysis from a neutral viewpoint without biases or assumptions concerning minority faculty and their lived experiences. Author beliefs about minority nursing faculty—which were limited for having not assumed that role before— were suspended in order to see the phenomenon clearly through the eyes of the interviewees. The list of units of relevant meaning extracted from each interview was
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Table 1. Secondary Interview Questions • Tell me about the challenges you have faced as a minority faculty member. • Can you tell me about your perceptions of what it means to be a minority nursing faculty member? • Tell me about the challenges you have faced as a minority faculty member. • Can you describe your response to these challenges? • As a minority faculty member, can you describe your relationships with your nursing colleagues? • As a minority faculty member, can you describe your relationships with students? • What have you found to be helpful or positive in your experience as a minority faculty member? • Do you have advice for minority graduate students planning to become nursing faculty?
carefully scrutinized to facilitate clustering of units of meaning to form themes. To assure credibility (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), each participant was provided a copy of her interview transcript for validation. Field notes were compared with the corresponding audio recordings; the notes were added to the text where appropriate, in order to preserve thick descriptions of the experience and, thus, transferability. The author identified and summarized relevant themes from the data. Participants were made aware of the topic and grand tour question prior to the interview. Concerning dependability and confirmability, more than one method of data collection was used, that is, audio recordings and field notes; data, methods, and decisions were documented for audit if necessary. The author conducted all interviews. The audiotape of each interview was listened to repeatedly and compared to the transcript to ensure accuracy.
Study Findings Eight possible participants were contacted, and six expressed interest; interviews were successfully scheduled and completed with five female assistant professors in three nursing programs in Tennessee who had been faculty for 8–13 years. Three were Black/African American, one Hispanic American, and one Asian American. Six themes and two subthemes emerged from the data; missing mentorship, lack of collegial support, harnessing external support, I feel more like a minority here, acculturation, and feeling isolated. The theme I feel more like a minority here has two subthemes: (1) relationship with faculty and (2) relationship with students.
Missing Mentorship The majority of participants described a lack of mentoring as they started their careers. The level and quality of mentoring they felt they needed and never received was a source of stress. Participant D spoke about needing support when she started as faculty 13 years prior to our interview. In the beginning you know nobody… I know some schools have mentors where you have faculty. I did not have that. I do not think anybody else had it when I
joined there. Nobody gave me a mentor, so there was nothing like you know you need to do this, or you need to do this, or what do you want to do. She described a mentor as Somebody I can at least talk to, somebody who can guide me. Tell me, you know, if I want to do this, what are the steps you know that I need, what is the process I can take, so having a mentor is very important to me in helping somebody progress in their nursing faculty climb up. Participant E, who over the course of her career had worked in two institutions, said she was assigned a mentor; however, not knowing what to ask was a barrier because her mentor would not volunteer information unless she asked. Participant B recalled her experiences as she started her faculty career: In my former employment, I had a mentor, obviously who was not a minority and obviously we had typical issues, for example not understanding that there are some things that you just don’t say in front of people because you could hurt someone’s feelings. And you know, just not understanding your culture…I do not have any minority faculty that could be my mentor. ....I wish that there was someone who looked like me or maybe would have made my first teaching experience easier. I would say so. But again, then I could relate to that person and that person could relate to me, and that would have made my teaching job maybe way easy to begin with but unfortunately I never really had that. Participant E's experience was somewhat similar: …I was assigned to … mentor; however, when I came into academia my dissertation was … my mentor was not interested in that and so therefore her interest in trying to help me get (it) into a manuscript form never came to fruition… now at another institution again being a majority institution, I am saying, “Okay, hey, I know I need to publish this. I know I need to do scholarly work” and I come to you and say, “Hey, do you want to tag team.” Then, I got to do what interests you, because you have the image, you have the power, you have the connections and so therefore I then have to succumb or put my idea on hold because I need the scholarship, I need the publications and then so I have been out of school now probably 7 years and my dissertation has never been put in a manuscript because I have now found myself trying to get my arms around what other people’s interest are so that I can get published. She would have appreciated a mentor “who I knew I could trust and knew I could talk to, who understood the struggles of a fairly young, you know, vibrant professor trying to understand how to be successful in academics.” Participant A, having started her career from a rather diverse institution and moved to a majority institution,
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advised minorities starting off as nursing faculty to “try to go to a place that has some minorities”: …I think it is very helpful to have someone that looks like you, especially if you do not have the experience. Because I think if you do not have the experience, I think that you need to go to a place they can mentor you or have a mentor that looks like you. Yeah. To have, I think, some support in any way. All the participants recommended getting a mentor as the most important thing every minority aspiring to be nursing faculty should do. Aside from recognizing the need for a mentor, two of the participants felt that they needed to mentor someone else. Participant A said of finding a mentor “I think it is hard” and quickly expressed her willingness to be a mentor: “I would love to mentor somebody, because you know I had people that helped me so much that were so encouraging, and I think that this is so important.”
Lack of Collegial Support Two participants who had not been faculty in historically Black colleges or otherwise diverse nursing programs reported lack of support from departmental administrators and colleagues. One was Participant E: When I first entered academia, I did not have my terminal degree and so my first job I was adjunct, still working on my doctorate degree… I just feel like that there was not the support there that I needed.… A huge part of being at a tenure earning line is that you have to do scholarly work – you have to show manuscripts, you have to do presentations and so when you are approaching other faculty who are not minority and you tell them you want them to help you flush out this article or flush out this manuscript, then you get a lot of resistance, because that is not their research interest and so therefore, you are left to put your ideas and thoughts to the side and then in order to meet the requirements for tenure of publication and research and scholarly work, you then align with them, the majority faculty, to get your name on something, and so to me that is why I say it has been very challenging is two-fold, trying to understand academia, understand the ins and outs of what it takes to be successful in academia and at the same time being an effective teacher in the classroom but also trying to do the work that it takes to be tenured, so just the lack of support overall. When I say lack of support I mean from the director of the school of nursing to the faculty. Participant D recalled a similar experience: When I came in to teaching, I did not know much about progression, like nursing faculty going from tenure or non-tenure and all that. I did not know that. So when I came, you know, I started with doing clinicals and all of that and then at one point I did ask about this tenure…. Nothing, nothing, nothing, until I asked and I did not get encouragement to pursue it. I was sort of told like you know, I don’t think you can do
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it. Because the words that were used were, are you sure you want to go that route? …after hearing this, I was no longer interested in doing that, and then at one point I noticed that people were doing research, so I wanted to do research, my chair knew about it, because when we write our self evaluation, I wrote it that I was going to this IRB because I am interested, but nobody actually directed me where to go…but I think if I were not a minority, I feel I would have gotten more encouragement to pursue this tenure you know and this research but I did not. If they had told me, “yeah you can do.” Instead of “Ahh, are you sure you know you want to go that route?” are you sure that is what you want to do? I mean hearing that, that is a damper in itself, it is telling you, “Oh you cannot do it.” In fact, I did PhD to show them I can do whatever they can do. In contrast, two participants who started their faculty careers from institutions with large proportions of minority faculty and students both claimed that they got support and encouragement from colleagues in their previous institutions.
Harnessing External Support All the minority faculty members stated that they had to locate their own sources of support and seek relevant information from outside their departments or institutions. Participant C said the following: Meeting other African American faculty has really been helpful, especially those who were teaching in a university setting more like my own, and I have met them usually at conferences. So once you get that and you see someone who says, “Oh yeah, I have experienced that. Or “Yeah, that was going on, or I like to teach at a higher level.” Knowing that if I were to have something that I feel like (I) couldn’t handle that I can pick up the phone and say you know, “I am having this situation, what do you think, what would be your advice to me?” The person that I would consider my mentor is an older person who has been teaching for a lot of years, and so I know that I can pick up the phone and actually call this person or you know I have one or two that I can particularly call that I think would be able to answer my questions. Participant E perceived a need for external support because she is left out when information is being passed around in her institution: So I had just then found myself seeking advice and support outside of the school of nursing from other people at other colleges, who I say “Hey, keep me in the loop of what is going on” … I realized in order to get a manuscript out I am going to have to do that, so I have sought out advice from other minority faculty across, you know, the United States to say, “Hey, where are you submitted your abstracts, people who want to hear about this.” I think I am going to
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continue to utilize this current mentor that they have assigned me in the school of nursing but at the same token still have my outside (mentor) to say, “Okay, yes, because at the current place that you are at right now this is what you can do.” But then on the outside still keep me in the loop of some of the other things that are going on nationwide.
I Feel More Like a Minority Here This consists of two subthemes: (1) relationship with colleagues and (2) relationship with students. Each of the participating faculty described a consciousness of being racially different based on workplace relationships with colleagues. Participant A recalled having been racially conscious for the first time in her academic career. Where I worked before, it was very different than what it is here because the school that I was working at has a lot of minorities. It came easy and for the population, I don’t know, it is different. I spent many years there and I don’t know. I felt so much part of… I never felt I was a foreigner. I never felt this, but I feel I am a foreigner here. Even though, not all of the faculty would speak with an accent, but I don’t know, I felt just that I was part of it, of a culture, but it is different here. I am different, I can feel that I am different, and I did not feel that I was different there, and I think it is just because of the uniqueness of the location of the (previous) school there compared to what it is here. I feel more like a minority here. Another participant found it difficult to adjust to the majority culture and, thus, encountered a major barrier in relating to her colleagues: My only problem is getting too close, because their culture is totally different from mine. I have been here for a while now, but still I find that their culture nowhere can compare my own culture with their culture. I am still not very comfortable with American ways, you know, so I can’t say that I am very close to anybody. I do not have any enemies. I get along very well with all of them, but I can’t say that I have close friends. Even participant E who was born in the US expressed similar difficulty: When I leave that university, I go home to be with my family, whereas my colleagues, the first Tuesday of the month there is this nursing meeting that they have put together and basically they go out to eat and they go out to have drinks, but that’s not, I mean they are not my friends, I do not have a desire to go out and do that with them. So my relationship with my peers in school of nursing is pure professional. Participant B also recalled cultural difference as a challenge in her previous institution: “I had a hard time actually relating maybe initially… as a minority, I was the only one back then, so I had a hard time relating to some of my colleagues or even students.”
One participant felt she was considered an outsider because of her accent. Another minority faculty felt that her opinion was being disregarded at faculty meetings. In contrast, all the participants claimed to have very good relationships with their students. According to Participant D, My students like me, they really do. I can tell you that since I have been teaching here for the past 13 years, you know we do student evaluation every semester and I have gotten very good evaluations. Participant A concurred: “usually I do relate very well with the students.” And so did Participant E: “My student evaluations reflect on a consistent basis that I am there for them.” Minority students seemed to identify with minority faculty members, requesting advice that transcended academics. However two of the interviewees had had negative experiences with some students. Participant A recounted this experience: I have two… weak students and, let’s say, they really had difficulty with test taking – great difficulty, they believed it was the way I was writing it. It was their fault. It was clear that they had problems with their test taking, but they said, “No, miss, it is the way you write, I cannot understand those questions.” I told them, I am not writing the questions, I have test banks. It is not that I wrote this, you need to practice, you need to do questions, because you are having problems and indeed even though they were able to pass mental health (speaker’s course), both of the students, later they failed Adult II. Yeah, I think by seeing me as different, it prevented them from looking into their problems. I am very careful, like with banks and things that I use; even though I have been doing this since 1999, …but I have never felt like this, this is the very first time that I had not one, but two students approach me in saying that it was my way of writing, because my English, I had English as a second language, that this is why they could not understand the questions. I had never had this before, I had never had such students. I had students before that they had difficulty understanding, but I never had somebody blame me for that, that it was my English that was affecting their ability to understand the questions. Another participant had a similar experience: … ….This particular student had a black student that was her partner (speaker is black) so I guess they were comparing papers, and she did not feel like her paper was graded like the other student’s paper. One of the faculty members happened to overhear her say something like, “It is probably because the student was black.” I have a rubric that I use and so it is very much based on points, not based on who wrote the paper.
Acculturation Most minority faculty interviewed perceived a need to acculturate in order to advance successfully in the
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university setting. Communication was also cited as a reason for acculturation. A faculty member described acculturation as an example of a coping skill in the academic environment:
few African Americans, 1 or 2, but majority were Caucasian, and I was basically the only Asian, but I grew up.
I have to be in to win; if they perceive me as being in with them, often times I can win. And so, it is just those types of communication, there are certain times that we as not only junior faculty but minorities, we miss out on a whole lot of stuff because we are not at the table drinking the wine or whatever they do. That is truly going to be something that I am going to have to really cultivate is the ability. You have to be in to win. You need to go in there with them, because they perceive that, as you are wanting to isolate yourself. So anyway, that is a problem to me, that is a struggle, that is a challenge, because if I make them feel like I have acculturated, if I have bought in to what they are trying to sell, then maybe life for me would be easier but on the flipside it is like, why do I have to do that? One participant talked about how hard she was trying to acculturate in the current (majority) institution, something she did not do at a previous institution she described as “very multicultural”:
Discussion
I try not to be biased to make sure that if it is something, what can I do to change, what can I do to not feel a foreigner the way I feel. I try to be open and feel acculturated and then of course it is the whole area, not only the school but the whole area is a different area. Yeah, because if anything you always try to acculturate, and again, like I said for me it was, I always felt that I was very well acculturated, but the thing is I have never worked in an environment like this. Another participant said of her colleagues: … The challenge is probably just to relate to how I do things and to make sure; although, that I can say that I have lived in this country for most of my life, so it was just relating, you know like when they say certain things, because they are sure. For example – this is a southern area, a southern town. The way they say things, I don’t quite get it, or their expressions, why do you say certain things, which does not make any sense to me, and that kind of stuff.
Feeling Isolated Two participants expressed their perception of isolation. Participant D reflected the following: There were no minority faculty here when I came, so I was sort of on my own, you know, for a while until now. One thing I really would like to see is more minority faculty coming in here, because I know I can at least relate to somebody who is experiencing similar things that I am, but it is not working, it is not, nobody comes. This was echoed by Participant B: As a minority, I was the only one back then, so I had a hard time relating to some of my colleagues or even students because they had no minority at all. We had a
By exploring the lived experiences of minority nursing faculty and meanings attached to them, shared themes were discovered; missing mentorship, lack of collegial support, harnessing external support, acculturation, feeling isolated, and I feel more like a minority here, with the following subthemes: relationship with colleagues and relationship with students. Most themes that emerged in this study have been documented among nursing and nonnursing faculty. The study by Gazza (2009) on full-time nursing faculty echoes the theme missing mentorship; the need for effective mentoring is not limited to minority faculty (Feldman, Greenberg, Jaffe-Ruiz, Kaufman, & Cignarale, 2015). Several studies of minority faculty also identified mentoring as a great area of need in teaching, research, and service (Bradley & Holcomb-McCoy, 2004; Mahoney et al., 2008; Price et al., 2005). However, only Mahoney et al. (2008) reflected the need of faculty to have mentors of like minority status or research interests, as expressed in this study. Prior studies in other minority faculty groups also reinforce the perception of the participants in this study about needing but not receiving support, (Bradley & Holcomb-McCoy, 2004), feeling isolated (Turner, 2002), and I feel more like a minority (Johnsrud & Sadao, 1998). Absence of support has also been described among nursing faculty who were likely Caucasian (Gazza, 2009). Another theme from this study that has been reported previously (Bradley & Holcomb-McCoy, 2004) is harnessing external support. All participants tended to look for help and information outside their institution; some participants who were previously faculty at more diverse institutions still held on to former colleagues for support. The seeming lack of support and isolation may result from lack of effective mentoring process. It has been recommended that a mentor and mentee should have similar interests to encourage bonding (Moore, 1996). The unique theme to this study is acculturation; as one participant put it, “I have to be in to win.” Differences and diversity should not be perceived as deficiencies but should be encouraged and supported (Johnsrud & Sadao, 1998), especially in nursing academe. However, minority nursing faculty members in this study felt a need to acculturate in order to succeed in academia. Applying the framework of the LaFromboise model of second-culture acquisition to the experiences of minority nursing faculty in this study provides rationale for their common experience. Minority faculty bring diversity to teaching and research; acknowledging who they are and how that affects their choices of scholarly activity and research interests could be a great strength for nursing now and in the future. Personal identity, which is a sense of individualism and cultural identity according to the LaFromboise model, starts them on the way to achieving
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bicultural competence and may bring about a more conducive work environment. Some participants felt that not belonging to the majority culture in their institution reduced their ability to partake in decision making. All faculty members need to achieve cultural competence. The closer faculty grow toward cultural competence, the more welcoming and accepting they become toward all culturally diverse people—students, clients, or fellow colleagues—thus creating more allinclusive and accepting environments. Cultural competence is an essential component in rendering effective and culturally responsive services to culturally and ethnically diverse clients (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). Cultural competence is an ongoing process; faculty members can progress from cultural awareness to cultural knowledge to cultural skill. Because they interact with diverse cultures through the minority faculty, majority faculty can develop enough cultural skill to desire to respect others' values, beliefs, and practices. Majority faculty can be genuine and flexible to understand the struggles of minorities in academe and focus on similarities rather than ethnicity. This has been described as “a genuine passion to accept differences and build on similarities, and to be willing to learn from others as cultural informants” (Campinha-Bacote, 2002, 183). It will not just end there; faculty will then be in a good position to model and teach cultural competence to their students, who will later become faculty or practicing nurses themselves. Nursing programs should include commitment to increasing diversity as part of their mission statements, create a welcoming academic culture through mentoring, and strive toward an inclusive academic environment based on appreciation of diversity and mutual respect. Cultural competence should be encouraged among the faculty to enhance development of cultural awareness and appreciation of diversity. The findings of this study call for review of mentoring practices in individual nursing programs. Formal mentor/ mentee programs should be instituted for junior faculty members (National League for Nursing, 2006). Potential mentors should be trained in effective mentoring technique. That this study was completed in one state limits generalizability of these findings. However, the nonunique findings have been documented in wider studies. More research is needed to provide solutions for the concerns of minority nursing faculty, which overlap loosely with those of nursing faculty as a whole (Gazza, 2009). Such research can focus on nursing leaders and how they can create a successful academic atmosphere for the minority faculty in their programs. Creation and evaluation of a survival kit for minority nursing faculty will also be valuable. Further research should assess the effect of mentorship of minority nursing faculty on their career satisfaction.
Conclusion Minority nursing faculty face challenges similar to minority faculty in other disciplines in higher institutions of learning, but acculturation appears to be a unique need of minority nurse faculty.
References American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2008). First group of minority nurse faculty scholars selected by the Johnson & Johnson campaign for nursing's future and AACN. Journal of Professional Nursing, 24, 69–70. Bradley, C. & Holcomb-McCoy, C. (2004). African American Counselor Educators: Their experiences, challenges, and recommendations. Counselor Education and Supervision, 43, 258–273. Budden, J. S. Zhong, E. H. Moulton, P. & Cimiotti, J. P. (2013). Highlights of the National Workforce Survey of Registered Nurses. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 4, 5–14. Campinha-Bacote, J. (1999). A model and instrument for addressing cultural competence in health care. Journal of Nursing Education, 38, 203–207. Campinha-Bacote, J. (2002). The process of cultural competence in the delivery of healthcare services: A model of care. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 13, 181–184, http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/10459602013003003. Centers for Disease Control (2009). Definitions of racial & ethnic populations. Retrieved 7/19/2010 from, http://www.cdc. gov/omhd/Populations/definitionsREMP.htm2009. Cuyjet, M. J. (2008). Bicultural faculty and their professional adaptation. New Directions for Student Services, 123, 73–82. Feldman, H. R. Greenberg, M. J. Jaffe-Ruiz, M. Kaufman, S. R. & Cignarale, S. (2015). Hitting the nursing faculty shortage head on: Strategies to recruit, retain and develop nursing faculty. Journal of Professional Nursing, 31, 170–178. Gazza, E. A. (2009). The experience of being a full-time nursing faculty member in a baccalaureate nursing education program. Journal of Professional Nursing, 25, 218–226. Godfrey, C. J. (2005). African American nursing faculty: Where are they? ABNF Journal, 16, 11–13. Groenewald, T. (2004). A phenomenological research design illustrated. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3, 42–55. Johnsrud, L. K. & Sadao, K. C. (1998). The common experience of "otherness": Ethnic and racial minority faculty. The Review of Higher Education, 21, 315–342. LaFromboise, T. Coleman, H. L. & Gerton, J. (1993). Psychological impact of biculturalism: Evidence and theory. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 395–412. Lincoln, Y. S. & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic enquiry. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Mahoney, M. R. Wilson, E. Odom, K. L. Flowers, L. & Adler, S. R. (2008). Minority faculty voices on diversity in academic medicine: Perspectives from one school. Academic Medicine, 83, 781–786. Moore, A. (1996). Career mentoring as a career development strategy for African American Women in the academy. Thresholds in Education, 22, 33–36. National League for Nursing (2006). Mentoring of nurse faculty. Position Statement, p1-6 (Retrieved from, http://www. nln.org/docs/default-source/advocacy-public-policy/mentoringof-nurse-faculty.pdf?sfvrsn=0). Price, E. G. Gozu, A. Kern, D. E. Powe, N. R. Wand, G. S. Golden, S. ... Cooper, L. A. (2005). The role of cultural diversity climate in recruitment, promotion, and retention of faculty in academic medicine. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 20, 565–571. Stanley, J. M. Capers, C. F. & Berlin, L. E. (2007). Changing the face of nursing faculty: Minority faculty recruitment and retention. Journal of Professional Nursing, 23, 253–261. Trower, C. A. & Chait, R. P. (2002). Faculty diversity - Too little for too long. Harvard Magazine, 104, 33–37 98. Turner, C. S. V. (2002). Women of color in academe: Living with multiple marginality. The Journal of Higher Education, 73, 74–93.
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ATIONAL COUNCIL OF State Boards of Nursing data show that nursing faculty in the United States (US) are 87% Caucasian (Budden, Zhong, Moulton, & Cimiotti, 2013). The underrepresentation of minorityrace nursing faculty portends a shortage of role models for minority students, which can undermine the efforts of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing to increase minority enrollment in nursing education programs (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2008). There is a need to recruit and retain minority faculty in order to promote race-concordant mentoring of minority students who desire such experiences. Academe has a unique culture that is not easily changed, a set of unspoken and unwritten beliefs and assumptions that guide individual and collective behavior (Trower & Chait, 2002). The existence of a dominant culture within a group of faculty members challenges minority members to adapt in one of several ways in order to maintain individual accomplishment or achieve group collaboration (Cuyjet, 2008).
Address correspondence to Folasade M. Kolade: Assistant Professor of Nurse Education, Elmira College, 1 Park PL, Elmira, NY, 14901. E-mail: [email protected] 8755-7223
The literature on minority nursing faculty has hitherto focused on their distribution across the US and recommended strategies for their recruitment and retention (Godfrey, 2005; Stanley, Capers, & Berlin, 2007). This study explores the experience of minority nursing faculty in the context of higher education faculty culture.
Theoretical Framework The LaFromboise model of bicultural competence focuses on the cognitive and effective processes that allow individuals to withstand acculturative stress (LaFromboise, Coleman, & Gerton, 1993). The foundation for this framework is the alternation model of second-culture acquisition, which assumes that it is possible for an individual to know and understand two different cultures. Alternation is the ability to function effectively in another culture while still maintaining the original culture, such that the individual alternates as necessary between the original and newly acquired culture. It is a valuable strength for a minority faculty member who can thereby exercise all aspects of his or her cultural identity and enhance mentorship for mentees of diverse racial or cultural backgrounds. Achievement of bicultural competence is based on development in six dimensions: knowledge of cultural beliefs and values, positive attitudes toward minority and majority groups, bicultural efficacy, communication ability,
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role repertoire, and a sense of being grounded (LaFromboise et al., 1993). In order to achieve this, an individual needs to accept each culture's world view and develop an ability to act within that context when interacting with members of that culture. When the values of both cultures conflict, the individual may internalize the conflict in order to find resolution or fuse both cultures to reduce stress. Holding positive attitudes toward both majority and minority cultures is based on the assumption that the individual recognizes bicultural competence as a desirable goal and holds each culture in positive, even if not equal, regard (LaFromboise et al., 1993). Contact with the culture is a necessary tool to develop positive feeling toward it; this is influenced by the type and length of contact. Information from other persons of one's own culture that have succeeded in dual socialization can prove invaluable. Bicultural efficacy is the confidence that one can live effectively in a satisfying manner within two groups without compromising one's cultural identity (LaFromboise et al., 1993). Having this belief will support an individual through the challenges of developing and maintaining effective support groups in both minority and majority cultures and enable one to persevere in times of rejection from one or both cultures. Communication ability refers to the effectiveness of an individual in communicating ideas and feelings to members of a given culture, both verbal and nonverbal; language competency may be a major building block of bicultural competence. According to LaFromboise et al. (1993), role repertoire refers to the range of culturally or situationally appropriate behaviors an individual has developed; the greater this range becomes, the higher the level of cultural competence attained. A sense of being grounded comes from the establishment of stable social networks in both cultures; it enhances an individual's ability to cope with the pressures of living in a bicultural environment. One must have skill to recruit and use external support systems in order to be culturally competent. In addition, the model of cultural competence in health care delivery (Campinha-Bacote, 1999, 2002) posits that there is a direct relationship between the level of competence of health care providers and their ability to provide culturally responsive services. Cultural competence is thus a process, not an endpoint, in which the nurse continuously seeks the ability to work within the cultural context of an individual, family, or community from a diverse cultural/ethnic background (CampinhaBacote, 2002). Five constructs the nurse has to assimilate to become culturally competent are cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skill, cultural encounter, and cultural desire. Cultural awareness is a process whereby the health practitioner conducts a self-search and an in-depth exploration of one's own feelings and biases toward other cultures (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). It also includes awareness of one's cultural and professional background. Cultural knowledge is attained when the health care professional seeks and obtains sound information regarding variations of culture (Campinha-Bacote, 2002).
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Cultural skill is the ability to conduct a cultural assessment; a cultural encounter occurs when there is encouragement to directly engage in face-to-face cultural interactions and other types of encounters with people from culturally diverse backgrounds in order to modify existing beliefs about a cultural group and to prevent possible stereotyping. Cultural desire assesses the motivation of the health care professional to engage in the process of becoming culturally aware (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). When all these processes are completed, the individual would become culturally competent to function appropriately in a different culture. Nursing faculty are in a central position to influence health care because they become culturally competent themselves; nurses taught by such faculty will be empowered to work optimally with patients of diverse cultural backgrounds. These conceptual frameworks share some descriptors of the process of achieving cultural competence. For instance, “knowledge of cultural beliefs and values” (LaFromboise et al., 1993) equates to “cultural knowledge” (Campinha-Bacote, 2002), and cultural desire (CampinhaBacote, 2002) is founded on a positive attitude about that culture (LaFromboise et al., 1993).
Literature Review Johnsrud and Sadao (1998) used phenomenology to explore day-to-day experiences of minority faculty members with their colleagues, department heads, and deans. The 22 participants represented 16 minorities (i.e., Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hawaiian, Filipino, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander). Three distinct but related experiences emerged as common across ethnic and racial minority groups: (a) the bicultural stance minority faculty are likely to cultivate, (b) the ethnocentrism they perceive on the part of White administrators and faculty, and (c) the discriminatory behavior they experience as minorities. The participants described a sense of “otherness,” a difference they found stressful and draining. Minority faculty were likely to cultivate biculturalism but perceived that majority faculty had low desire to do likewise. Although this study was conducted at a university where 31% of the faculty—and 76% of the students—are of minority race, minority faculty perceived that they experienced the academy differently than their White counterparts. Turner (2002) interviewed four Asian Pacific American, 15 African American, four Native American, and eight Latino tenured female faculty at unnamed colleges. Themes identified in this phenomenology study include feeling isolated and underrespected; salience of race over gender; being underemployed and overused by departments and/or institutions; being torn between family, community, and career; being challenged by students; and having a sense of accomplishment (Turner, 2002). Many respondents felt a need to leave their perceived identities at the doorstep of the tenure process. A nationwide mixed methods study of 41 African American counselor educators revealed that, regardless of
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gender, these faculty felt that they had excessive diversity-related service/committee demands from their departments and colleges (Bradley & Holcomb-McCoy, 2004). All participants reported lack of collegial support from colleagues in their department and lack of mentorship for navigation of the tenure process; a few had received mentoring and encouragement from senior African American faculty outside their department. Twenty-nine full-time tenure-track physicians at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine participated in a phenomenological exploration of the perceptions of majority and minority faculty regarding cultural diversity in academic medicine (Price et al., 2005). African Americans, Mexicans, mainland Puerto Ricans, or Native Americans were classified as underrepresented minorities (URMs). Three focus groups were convened: physicians of different ethnic backgrounds (mixed group), URM physicians (URM group), and ethnic majority physicians (majority group); 12 interviews (9 URM, 3 majority; 6 males, 6 females) were also conducted. The participants identified several potential explanations for underrepresentation of minorities: a nonwelcoming environment, lack of role models or mentors with whom they can identify, lack of prior educational opportunities, poor recruitment efforts, and educational debt (Price et al., 2005). At another medical school, 36 URM faculty members were individually interviewed on their experiences as minorities, perspectives on diversity, and recommendations for improvement. The participants included 20 women, 17 African Americans, and 10 full professors. Four major themes emerged: choosing to participate in diversity-related activities, driven by personal commitment and institutional pressure; the gap between intention and implementation of institutional efforts to increase diversity; detecting and reacting to discrimination; and a need for a multifaceted approach to mentorship, given few available minority mentors (Mahoney, Wilson, Odom, Flowers, & Adler, 2008). Eight full-time, female baccalaureate nursing faculty of undisclosed race participated in a phenomenological study intending to discover what it is like to be a nursing faculty member; the findings included five themes (Gazza, 2009). All participants described their jobs as busy but rewarding in terms of making a difference in the world of their students and being able to touch lives indirectly as gatekeepers of the nursing profession. The participants sought various ways to balance all of their roles at work and between their work and nonwork roles. They, however, reported lack of mentorship and support, which they considered very important. The study also described good, bad, or ugly workplace relationships with fellow faculty and program administrators.
Methodology A phenomenological study was conducted to explore the research question: What are the lived experiences of minority nursing faculty?
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Population, Sample, and Recruitment Procedures The population of interest was minority nursing faculty members. In the US, an ethnic or racial minority is an individual who has self-identified as having either an American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, or Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander heritage (Centers for Disease Control, 2009). Inclusion criteria included fulltime faculty members with the rank of assistant, associate, or full professor who self-identified as an ethnic minority and who had taught in an accredited baccalaureate nursing program for 1 or more academic years. Sample recruitment was achieved through purposive and snowball techniques that began when administrators of accredited baccalaureate nursing programs in a southeastern state were contacted to identify their minority faculty members. The programs were selected so as to be within geographic reach of the author, then a graduate student, who drove up to 210 miles one way to conduct the interviews. Potential participants were invited directly via e-mail, telephone, and face-to-face contact. Participants were asked to provide names and contact information of other faculty that may meet inclusion criteria. The Daemen College Human Subjects Research Review Committee approved the study protocol. Participation was strictly voluntary, and informed consent preceded each interview.
Interviews Data were collected in 2010 during face-to-face interviews that were conducted in comfortable locations mutually agreed upon by the participant and interviewer. At start of each session, all study participants were advised that interviews could last 45–60 minutes. A 10-item demographic survey was completed. All interviews were audiotaped, and field notes were recorded individually. Field notes were matched with each interview and were assigned a unique identifier. Informant-directed interview sessions were started by asking the grand tour question, “What has your experience been like as a nursing faculty?” Follow-up questions are listed in Table 1. Informants' leads were followed with additional reflecting or prompting questions as needed.
Treatment of Data Each interview recording was transcribed by a transcriptionist and analyzed separately by the author using a simplified version of Hycner's five-step explicitation process (Groenewald, 2004), as outlined below. Bracketing involved conducting the interviews and data analysis from a neutral viewpoint without biases or assumptions concerning minority faculty and their lived experiences. Author beliefs about minority nursing faculty—which were limited for having not assumed that role before— were suspended in order to see the phenomenon clearly through the eyes of the interviewees. The list of units of relevant meaning extracted from each interview was
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Table 1. Secondary Interview Questions • Tell me about the challenges you have faced as a minority faculty member. • Can you tell me about your perceptions of what it means to be a minority nursing faculty member? • Tell me about the challenges you have faced as a minority faculty member. • Can you describe your response to these challenges? • As a minority faculty member, can you describe your relationships with your nursing colleagues? • As a minority faculty member, can you describe your relationships with students? • What have you found to be helpful or positive in your experience as a minority faculty member? • Do you have advice for minority graduate students planning to become nursing faculty?
carefully scrutinized to facilitate clustering of units of meaning to form themes. To assure credibility (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), each participant was provided a copy of her interview transcript for validation. Field notes were compared with the corresponding audio recordings; the notes were added to the text where appropriate, in order to preserve thick descriptions of the experience and, thus, transferability. The author identified and summarized relevant themes from the data. Participants were made aware of the topic and grand tour question prior to the interview. Concerning dependability and confirmability, more than one method of data collection was used, that is, audio recordings and field notes; data, methods, and decisions were documented for audit if necessary. The author conducted all interviews. The audiotape of each interview was listened to repeatedly and compared to the transcript to ensure accuracy.
Study Findings Eight possible participants were contacted, and six expressed interest; interviews were successfully scheduled and completed with five female assistant professors in three nursing programs in Tennessee who had been faculty for 8–13 years. Three were Black/African American, one Hispanic American, and one Asian American. Six themes and two subthemes emerged from the data; missing mentorship, lack of collegial support, harnessing external support, I feel more like a minority here, acculturation, and feeling isolated. The theme I feel more like a minority here has two subthemes: (1) relationship with faculty and (2) relationship with students.
Missing Mentorship The majority of participants described a lack of mentoring as they started their careers. The level and quality of mentoring they felt they needed and never received was a source of stress. Participant D spoke about needing support when she started as faculty 13 years prior to our interview. In the beginning you know nobody… I know some schools have mentors where you have faculty. I did not have that. I do not think anybody else had it when I
joined there. Nobody gave me a mentor, so there was nothing like you know you need to do this, or you need to do this, or what do you want to do. She described a mentor as Somebody I can at least talk to, somebody who can guide me. Tell me, you know, if I want to do this, what are the steps you know that I need, what is the process I can take, so having a mentor is very important to me in helping somebody progress in their nursing faculty climb up. Participant E, who over the course of her career had worked in two institutions, said she was assigned a mentor; however, not knowing what to ask was a barrier because her mentor would not volunteer information unless she asked. Participant B recalled her experiences as she started her faculty career: In my former employment, I had a mentor, obviously who was not a minority and obviously we had typical issues, for example not understanding that there are some things that you just don’t say in front of people because you could hurt someone’s feelings. And you know, just not understanding your culture…I do not have any minority faculty that could be my mentor. ....I wish that there was someone who looked like me or maybe would have made my first teaching experience easier. I would say so. But again, then I could relate to that person and that person could relate to me, and that would have made my teaching job maybe way easy to begin with but unfortunately I never really had that. Participant E's experience was somewhat similar: …I was assigned to … mentor; however, when I came into academia my dissertation was … my mentor was not interested in that and so therefore her interest in trying to help me get (it) into a manuscript form never came to fruition… now at another institution again being a majority institution, I am saying, “Okay, hey, I know I need to publish this. I know I need to do scholarly work” and I come to you and say, “Hey, do you want to tag team.” Then, I got to do what interests you, because you have the image, you have the power, you have the connections and so therefore I then have to succumb or put my idea on hold because I need the scholarship, I need the publications and then so I have been out of school now probably 7 years and my dissertation has never been put in a manuscript because I have now found myself trying to get my arms around what other people’s interest are so that I can get published. She would have appreciated a mentor “who I knew I could trust and knew I could talk to, who understood the struggles of a fairly young, you know, vibrant professor trying to understand how to be successful in academics.” Participant A, having started her career from a rather diverse institution and moved to a majority institution,
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advised minorities starting off as nursing faculty to “try to go to a place that has some minorities”: …I think it is very helpful to have someone that looks like you, especially if you do not have the experience. Because I think if you do not have the experience, I think that you need to go to a place they can mentor you or have a mentor that looks like you. Yeah. To have, I think, some support in any way. All the participants recommended getting a mentor as the most important thing every minority aspiring to be nursing faculty should do. Aside from recognizing the need for a mentor, two of the participants felt that they needed to mentor someone else. Participant A said of finding a mentor “I think it is hard” and quickly expressed her willingness to be a mentor: “I would love to mentor somebody, because you know I had people that helped me so much that were so encouraging, and I think that this is so important.”
Lack of Collegial Support Two participants who had not been faculty in historically Black colleges or otherwise diverse nursing programs reported lack of support from departmental administrators and colleagues. One was Participant E: When I first entered academia, I did not have my terminal degree and so my first job I was adjunct, still working on my doctorate degree… I just feel like that there was not the support there that I needed.… A huge part of being at a tenure earning line is that you have to do scholarly work – you have to show manuscripts, you have to do presentations and so when you are approaching other faculty who are not minority and you tell them you want them to help you flush out this article or flush out this manuscript, then you get a lot of resistance, because that is not their research interest and so therefore, you are left to put your ideas and thoughts to the side and then in order to meet the requirements for tenure of publication and research and scholarly work, you then align with them, the majority faculty, to get your name on something, and so to me that is why I say it has been very challenging is two-fold, trying to understand academia, understand the ins and outs of what it takes to be successful in academia and at the same time being an effective teacher in the classroom but also trying to do the work that it takes to be tenured, so just the lack of support overall. When I say lack of support I mean from the director of the school of nursing to the faculty. Participant D recalled a similar experience: When I came in to teaching, I did not know much about progression, like nursing faculty going from tenure or non-tenure and all that. I did not know that. So when I came, you know, I started with doing clinicals and all of that and then at one point I did ask about this tenure…. Nothing, nothing, nothing, until I asked and I did not get encouragement to pursue it. I was sort of told like you know, I don’t think you can do
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it. Because the words that were used were, are you sure you want to go that route? …after hearing this, I was no longer interested in doing that, and then at one point I noticed that people were doing research, so I wanted to do research, my chair knew about it, because when we write our self evaluation, I wrote it that I was going to this IRB because I am interested, but nobody actually directed me where to go…but I think if I were not a minority, I feel I would have gotten more encouragement to pursue this tenure you know and this research but I did not. If they had told me, “yeah you can do.” Instead of “Ahh, are you sure you know you want to go that route?” are you sure that is what you want to do? I mean hearing that, that is a damper in itself, it is telling you, “Oh you cannot do it.” In fact, I did PhD to show them I can do whatever they can do. In contrast, two participants who started their faculty careers from institutions with large proportions of minority faculty and students both claimed that they got support and encouragement from colleagues in their previous institutions.
Harnessing External Support All the minority faculty members stated that they had to locate their own sources of support and seek relevant information from outside their departments or institutions. Participant C said the following: Meeting other African American faculty has really been helpful, especially those who were teaching in a university setting more like my own, and I have met them usually at conferences. So once you get that and you see someone who says, “Oh yeah, I have experienced that. Or “Yeah, that was going on, or I like to teach at a higher level.” Knowing that if I were to have something that I feel like (I) couldn’t handle that I can pick up the phone and say you know, “I am having this situation, what do you think, what would be your advice to me?” The person that I would consider my mentor is an older person who has been teaching for a lot of years, and so I know that I can pick up the phone and actually call this person or you know I have one or two that I can particularly call that I think would be able to answer my questions. Participant E perceived a need for external support because she is left out when information is being passed around in her institution: So I had just then found myself seeking advice and support outside of the school of nursing from other people at other colleges, who I say “Hey, keep me in the loop of what is going on” … I realized in order to get a manuscript out I am going to have to do that, so I have sought out advice from other minority faculty across, you know, the United States to say, “Hey, where are you submitted your abstracts, people who want to hear about this.” I think I am going to
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continue to utilize this current mentor that they have assigned me in the school of nursing but at the same token still have my outside (mentor) to say, “Okay, yes, because at the current place that you are at right now this is what you can do.” But then on the outside still keep me in the loop of some of the other things that are going on nationwide.
I Feel More Like a Minority Here This consists of two subthemes: (1) relationship with colleagues and (2) relationship with students. Each of the participating faculty described a consciousness of being racially different based on workplace relationships with colleagues. Participant A recalled having been racially conscious for the first time in her academic career. Where I worked before, it was very different than what it is here because the school that I was working at has a lot of minorities. It came easy and for the population, I don’t know, it is different. I spent many years there and I don’t know. I felt so much part of… I never felt I was a foreigner. I never felt this, but I feel I am a foreigner here. Even though, not all of the faculty would speak with an accent, but I don’t know, I felt just that I was part of it, of a culture, but it is different here. I am different, I can feel that I am different, and I did not feel that I was different there, and I think it is just because of the uniqueness of the location of the (previous) school there compared to what it is here. I feel more like a minority here. Another participant found it difficult to adjust to the majority culture and, thus, encountered a major barrier in relating to her colleagues: My only problem is getting too close, because their culture is totally different from mine. I have been here for a while now, but still I find that their culture nowhere can compare my own culture with their culture. I am still not very comfortable with American ways, you know, so I can’t say that I am very close to anybody. I do not have any enemies. I get along very well with all of them, but I can’t say that I have close friends. Even participant E who was born in the US expressed similar difficulty: When I leave that university, I go home to be with my family, whereas my colleagues, the first Tuesday of the month there is this nursing meeting that they have put together and basically they go out to eat and they go out to have drinks, but that’s not, I mean they are not my friends, I do not have a desire to go out and do that with them. So my relationship with my peers in school of nursing is pure professional. Participant B also recalled cultural difference as a challenge in her previous institution: “I had a hard time actually relating maybe initially… as a minority, I was the only one back then, so I had a hard time relating to some of my colleagues or even students.”
One participant felt she was considered an outsider because of her accent. Another minority faculty felt that her opinion was being disregarded at faculty meetings. In contrast, all the participants claimed to have very good relationships with their students. According to Participant D, My students like me, they really do. I can tell you that since I have been teaching here for the past 13 years, you know we do student evaluation every semester and I have gotten very good evaluations. Participant A concurred: “usually I do relate very well with the students.” And so did Participant E: “My student evaluations reflect on a consistent basis that I am there for them.” Minority students seemed to identify with minority faculty members, requesting advice that transcended academics. However two of the interviewees had had negative experiences with some students. Participant A recounted this experience: I have two… weak students and, let’s say, they really had difficulty with test taking – great difficulty, they believed it was the way I was writing it. It was their fault. It was clear that they had problems with their test taking, but they said, “No, miss, it is the way you write, I cannot understand those questions.” I told them, I am not writing the questions, I have test banks. It is not that I wrote this, you need to practice, you need to do questions, because you are having problems and indeed even though they were able to pass mental health (speaker’s course), both of the students, later they failed Adult II. Yeah, I think by seeing me as different, it prevented them from looking into their problems. I am very careful, like with banks and things that I use; even though I have been doing this since 1999, …but I have never felt like this, this is the very first time that I had not one, but two students approach me in saying that it was my way of writing, because my English, I had English as a second language, that this is why they could not understand the questions. I had never had this before, I had never had such students. I had students before that they had difficulty understanding, but I never had somebody blame me for that, that it was my English that was affecting their ability to understand the questions. Another participant had a similar experience: … ….This particular student had a black student that was her partner (speaker is black) so I guess they were comparing papers, and she did not feel like her paper was graded like the other student’s paper. One of the faculty members happened to overhear her say something like, “It is probably because the student was black.” I have a rubric that I use and so it is very much based on points, not based on who wrote the paper.
Acculturation Most minority faculty interviewed perceived a need to acculturate in order to advance successfully in the
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university setting. Communication was also cited as a reason for acculturation. A faculty member described acculturation as an example of a coping skill in the academic environment:
few African Americans, 1 or 2, but majority were Caucasian, and I was basically the only Asian, but I grew up.
I have to be in to win; if they perceive me as being in with them, often times I can win. And so, it is just those types of communication, there are certain times that we as not only junior faculty but minorities, we miss out on a whole lot of stuff because we are not at the table drinking the wine or whatever they do. That is truly going to be something that I am going to have to really cultivate is the ability. You have to be in to win. You need to go in there with them, because they perceive that, as you are wanting to isolate yourself. So anyway, that is a problem to me, that is a struggle, that is a challenge, because if I make them feel like I have acculturated, if I have bought in to what they are trying to sell, then maybe life for me would be easier but on the flipside it is like, why do I have to do that? One participant talked about how hard she was trying to acculturate in the current (majority) institution, something she did not do at a previous institution she described as “very multicultural”:
Discussion
I try not to be biased to make sure that if it is something, what can I do to change, what can I do to not feel a foreigner the way I feel. I try to be open and feel acculturated and then of course it is the whole area, not only the school but the whole area is a different area. Yeah, because if anything you always try to acculturate, and again, like I said for me it was, I always felt that I was very well acculturated, but the thing is I have never worked in an environment like this. Another participant said of her colleagues: … The challenge is probably just to relate to how I do things and to make sure; although, that I can say that I have lived in this country for most of my life, so it was just relating, you know like when they say certain things, because they are sure. For example – this is a southern area, a southern town. The way they say things, I don’t quite get it, or their expressions, why do you say certain things, which does not make any sense to me, and that kind of stuff.
Feeling Isolated Two participants expressed their perception of isolation. Participant D reflected the following: There were no minority faculty here when I came, so I was sort of on my own, you know, for a while until now. One thing I really would like to see is more minority faculty coming in here, because I know I can at least relate to somebody who is experiencing similar things that I am, but it is not working, it is not, nobody comes. This was echoed by Participant B: As a minority, I was the only one back then, so I had a hard time relating to some of my colleagues or even students because they had no minority at all. We had a
By exploring the lived experiences of minority nursing faculty and meanings attached to them, shared themes were discovered; missing mentorship, lack of collegial support, harnessing external support, acculturation, feeling isolated, and I feel more like a minority here, with the following subthemes: relationship with colleagues and relationship with students. Most themes that emerged in this study have been documented among nursing and nonnursing faculty. The study by Gazza (2009) on full-time nursing faculty echoes the theme missing mentorship; the need for effective mentoring is not limited to minority faculty (Feldman, Greenberg, Jaffe-Ruiz, Kaufman, & Cignarale, 2015). Several studies of minority faculty also identified mentoring as a great area of need in teaching, research, and service (Bradley & Holcomb-McCoy, 2004; Mahoney et al., 2008; Price et al., 2005). However, only Mahoney et al. (2008) reflected the need of faculty to have mentors of like minority status or research interests, as expressed in this study. Prior studies in other minority faculty groups also reinforce the perception of the participants in this study about needing but not receiving support, (Bradley & Holcomb-McCoy, 2004), feeling isolated (Turner, 2002), and I feel more like a minority (Johnsrud & Sadao, 1998). Absence of support has also been described among nursing faculty who were likely Caucasian (Gazza, 2009). Another theme from this study that has been reported previously (Bradley & Holcomb-McCoy, 2004) is harnessing external support. All participants tended to look for help and information outside their institution; some participants who were previously faculty at more diverse institutions still held on to former colleagues for support. The seeming lack of support and isolation may result from lack of effective mentoring process. It has been recommended that a mentor and mentee should have similar interests to encourage bonding (Moore, 1996). The unique theme to this study is acculturation; as one participant put it, “I have to be in to win.” Differences and diversity should not be perceived as deficiencies but should be encouraged and supported (Johnsrud & Sadao, 1998), especially in nursing academe. However, minority nursing faculty members in this study felt a need to acculturate in order to succeed in academia. Applying the framework of the LaFromboise model of second-culture acquisition to the experiences of minority nursing faculty in this study provides rationale for their common experience. Minority faculty bring diversity to teaching and research; acknowledging who they are and how that affects their choices of scholarly activity and research interests could be a great strength for nursing now and in the future. Personal identity, which is a sense of individualism and cultural identity according to the LaFromboise model, starts them on the way to achieving
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bicultural competence and may bring about a more conducive work environment. Some participants felt that not belonging to the majority culture in their institution reduced their ability to partake in decision making. All faculty members need to achieve cultural competence. The closer faculty grow toward cultural competence, the more welcoming and accepting they become toward all culturally diverse people—students, clients, or fellow colleagues—thus creating more allinclusive and accepting environments. Cultural competence is an essential component in rendering effective and culturally responsive services to culturally and ethnically diverse clients (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). Cultural competence is an ongoing process; faculty members can progress from cultural awareness to cultural knowledge to cultural skill. Because they interact with diverse cultures through the minority faculty, majority faculty can develop enough cultural skill to desire to respect others' values, beliefs, and practices. Majority faculty can be genuine and flexible to understand the struggles of minorities in academe and focus on similarities rather than ethnicity. This has been described as “a genuine passion to accept differences and build on similarities, and to be willing to learn from others as cultural informants” (Campinha-Bacote, 2002, 183). It will not just end there; faculty will then be in a good position to model and teach cultural competence to their students, who will later become faculty or practicing nurses themselves. Nursing programs should include commitment to increasing diversity as part of their mission statements, create a welcoming academic culture through mentoring, and strive toward an inclusive academic environment based on appreciation of diversity and mutual respect. Cultural competence should be encouraged among the faculty to enhance development of cultural awareness and appreciation of diversity. The findings of this study call for review of mentoring practices in individual nursing programs. Formal mentor/ mentee programs should be instituted for junior faculty members (National League for Nursing, 2006). Potential mentors should be trained in effective mentoring technique. That this study was completed in one state limits generalizability of these findings. However, the nonunique findings have been documented in wider studies. More research is needed to provide solutions for the concerns of minority nursing faculty, which overlap loosely with those of nursing faculty as a whole (Gazza, 2009). Such research can focus on nursing leaders and how they can create a successful academic atmosphere for the minority faculty in their programs. Creation and evaluation of a survival kit for minority nursing faculty will also be valuable. Further research should assess the effect of mentorship of minority nursing faculty on their career satisfaction.
Conclusion Minority nursing faculty face challenges similar to minority faculty in other disciplines in higher institutions of learning, but acculturation appears to be a unique need of minority nurse faculty.
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