The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) is developing a program to provide professional development for a critical group of STEM faculty: women faculty of color at HBCUs. AAC&U will address this need by launching a series of national Symposia and workshops targeting current and future women faculty and administrators of color at HBCUs. These professional development offerings will acquaint them with both the pedagogical issues and academic leadership challenges of the 21st century. More importantly, the initiative will teach them the art and science of addressing these issues and challenges. A particular focus of these symposia and workshops will be on the needs and issues particularly attendant to women faculty and administrators of color, and the growing number of historically underrepresented women and men students that will increasingly populate the college and university classrooms of the future. The preparation of faculty for the future among women of color at these institutions is in the national interest because enrollment at HBCUs typically consists of about 70% women, and because they continue to confer nearly 25% of all baccalaureate degrees earned by African Americans. HBCUs are among the nation's leaders in producing undergraduates who go on to obtain PhD degrees. The professional development offerings have three mutually reinforcing components: 1) to introduce 21st century academic professionals to topics designed to advance the curricular frameworks and teaching methodologies needed to increase the number of underserved students who may ultimately complete degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields; 2) to build faculty capacity to address the varied skills and abilities of the twenty-first century learner; and 3) to provide a leadership development path for women faculty of color at HBCUs, where women play a much smaller role in the STEM disciplines even than at majority institutions. Strategies for preparing faculty to be effective purveyors of teaching and learning in this constellation of institutions may have the added value of producing effective models that can be replicated successfully in other types of minority serving institutions as well as in predominately white institutions.
