Racial and Gendered Experiences that Dissuade a Career in the Professoriate William H. Robinson 1 , Ebony O. McGee 2 , Lydia C. Bentley 2 , Stacey L. Houston II 3 , Portia K. Botchway 2 , and Ruchi Roy 2 1 Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 2 Department of Teaching and Learning 3 Department of Sociology Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA Abstract—Faculty members play a multi-faceted role in the en- gineering profession. They help to discover, promote, and dissem- inate advancements in technology, and they engage in capacity- building by training a future workforce of engineers. Yet, many potential faculty members are dissuaded from academia. This paper describes findings from both interviews and focus groups of 60 Black engineering Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars, which were conducted during our study to understand their career decision-making process. Their racial and gendered experiences impact their desire and choice to pursue an academic career. Index Terms—impostor phenomenon, micro-aggressions, fac- ulty diversity I. I NTRODUCTION Forces such as rapid changes in technology, changing racial and ethnic demographics, national security, and globalization have all fueled the rationale to increase and diversify the science and engineering workforce [1]–[3]. However, to be successful in this endeavor, universities must attract and retain a diverse pool of scholars within the science and engineering disciplines. For example, a single Ph.D. educator from an engineering department may teach hundreds of students for a third of a century or more, and his or her students may train hundreds more; in addition, research findings from a single Ph.D. educator may be disseminated to shape the understanding of future engineering experts and professionals. The creation of even a small group of very successful Black Ph.D. engineering faculty, who form a network and win tenure at key institutions, can create an intellectual and technological movement with broad and sustainable influence. The presence or absence of Black engineering faculty can affect the recruit- ment, training, and success of students of color for generations. While the number of engineering faculty is rising, gaps in ethnicity and gender persist. According to recent data [4], [5], 48% of engineering schools have no Black tenured and/or tenure-track faculty members, 19% have only one, and 12% have two. The remaining 21% have more than two Black tenured and/or tenure-track faculty members. Though there has been a gradual increase in female tenured and tenure- track faculty members, still only 12.5% of all U.S. engineering institutions with at least 25 tenured and/or tenure track faculty members have more than 20% female faculty members. This paper describes racial and gendered experiences of African American engineering Ph.D. students, candidates, and postdoctoral scholars to understand the critical factors that leave African Americans as one of the most underrepresented racial groups in engineering faculty positions. These results are in addition to findings that include the perspectives from African American faculty and minority engineering program (MEP) directors [6]. The organization of this paper is as follows. Section II discusses negative constructs that can impede the pathway to academic careers in engineering. Section III describes this study’s methodology to examine the factors that impact the production of African American Ph.D.’s in engineering, as well as the factors that affect the pathway to tenured faculty positions in engineering. Section IV provides a discussion on racial and gendered experiences collected from focus groups and interviews. Finally, Section V summarizes the paper. II. RELATED WORK Diversity has become a top priority in many engineering colleges and departments across the country. Despite the best intentions, though, many organizations have failed to reflect societal demographics within their faculty ranks. Techniques and strategies exist to recruit candidates from traditionally underrepresented groups [7], [8], yet, the full participation of these groups has not been achieved [9]. This section discusses both micro-aggressions and the impostor phenomenon, and their impact on the successful development of potential faculty members from underrepresented minority (URM) groups. A. Racial and gender micro-aggressions Amidst an extensive research project that spanned nearly three decades, Pierce [10]–[12] proposed the term racial micro-aggressions to explain a subtle but persistent form of racism that greatly impacts the lives and experiences of African American people and other persons of color. Pierce and his research team have defined racial micro-aggressions as “subtle, stunning, often automatic, and non-verbal exchanges which are ’put downs’ of blacks by offenders” [13]. As Pierce argues, racism has transformed over the various generations 978-1-5090-0151-4/15/$31.00 c 2015 IEEE