PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (March 18, 2020) – During a return visit to Prairie View A&M University in February, Donathan Brown, Ph.D., the inaugural assistant provost and assistant vice president for Faculty Diversity & Recruitment at Rochester Institute of Technology, recruited campus academic administrators in an effort to lure diverse future professors to his campus.
Donathan Brown, Ph.D.
“The idea was to meet with administrators about the programs that we have and hope that they would spread that information to their graduate students,” Brown said.
In November 2019, he met with graduate students majoring in engineering, business, juvenile justice, and clinical psychology and shared with them more information about faculty life at RIT. The February visit focused on the two programs his college is offering to increase the diversity of applicants and ultimate faculty hires. Brown met with deans, department chairs, and directors in the colleges of business, psychology, and engineering, including Professor Richard Wilkins, Ph.D., who is the graduate coordinator in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Roy G. Perry College of Engineering.
“Dr. Brown meet with me on February 11, 2020, in my office. He described RIT’s direct recruiting program, and I described to him our Ph.D. program in electrical engineering,” said Wilkins, who is also director of the NASA Center for Radiation Engineering and Science for Space Exploration at PVAMU.
“I applaud RIT’s initiative to increase the participation of underrepresented minorities in academia, especially in the STEM disciplines,” Wilkins said. “The idea of going directly to HBCU’s [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] with known Ph.D. programs is a good one, and I hope to see more like it. Further, I believe the fact that an associate provost is doing the recruiting shows the depth of RIT’s commitment to this effort.”
Richard Wilkins, Ph.D.
RIT Future Faculty Program
“Our Future Faculty Program is a great opportunity for his students because it gives them something they don’t know. It exposes them to something they don’t know, faculty life, and what is it like to be a faculty member,” Brown explained about the Future Faculty Program, which is a free, “rigorous four-day program designed for African American, Latino American, and Native American (AALANA) scholars and artists to experience a ‘behind the scenes’ glimpse into life as a faculty member.”
Graduate students and alumni with master’s or doctorate degrees have until Friday, March 27, to apply to the Future Faculty Program.
Scholars Network
The RIT Scholars Network is the second initiative for future employment for PVAMU grad students, which the university launched 17 years ago. The free program allows students to enroll online and provide their credentials for consideration for current and future employment opportunities. If a position matches the network member’s area of study and expertise, RIT will contact the individual and discuss ways to connect them with the specific search committee.
Brown visited ten universities last fall, and PVAMU was one of three HBCUs that were on his list. The universities visited include:
- Cornell University
- Jackson State University
- North Carolina A&T University
- Prairie View A&M University
- Ohio State University
- Texas A&M University
- University of Colorado Boulder
- University of Florida
- University of Washington
- University of Wisconsin – Madison
Brown’s office is offering the Future Faculty Program and Scholars Network to find minority candidates, who may or may not have thought about becoming a faculty member, to put them on the track to teaching.
“We are an institution that takes pride in both the balance of excellence in teaching and research. But we are also able to assist individuals who may want to work on their teaching,” Brown explained. “One of the things that we do differently from any other institution is frankly, the use of social media. My office has a Facebook account, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I use my Twitter to talk about and present a public image to the recruitment effort because all too often, the comment is made that ‘We don’t exist.’ ‘You can’t find people of color with Ph.Ds.’ And my argument is, ‘You’re looking in all the wrong places.’ One of the missions that I have is to provide that public image to show here are a lot of students, excellent students.”
To learn more about RIT faculty recruitment at PVAMU, watch this video or contact the Office of Graduate Studies at (936) 261-3518, or by email at gradstudies@pvamu.edu.
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By Michael Douglas