Surveying the Campus Climate for Faculty: A Comparison of the Assessments of STEM and non-STEM faculty
Keywords:
job satisfaction, career progress satisfaction, gender, race/ethnicityAbstract
A fundamental assumption of programs intended to increase the numbers of women faculty in science, engineering and math (STEM) has been that women in these disciplines experience a uniquely hostile climate. While this focus on STEM faculty is necessary and important, we argue that it may be too narrow.& In this paper, we compare STEM to non-STEM faculty, drawing on a representative survey of university faculty in one institution (N=612) conducted in 2007. Our findings indicate that non-white men in the STEM disciplines are in fact significantly less satisfied than white men in these fields and less satisfied than their counterparts in non-STEM fields.& Among white women, those in STEM fields are significantly less satisfied than those in non-STEM disciplines. These differences are largely mediated by perceptions of work and contextual factors, however.& With a few exceptions, we find that the factors that predict satisfaction are the same across groups of faculty.& This implies that efforts to improve university and departmental climates will benefit all faculty.
&
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
