February 3, 2016
The program, Pathways to the Professoriate, is supported by a $5.1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the University of Pennsylvania for its Graduate School of Education's Center for Minority Serving Institutions. Over a five-year period, the program will prepare 90 students from
Elizabeth A. Say, Ph.D., Dean of the College of Humanities
Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) across the United States, including CSUN, to move forward and get doctorates in humanities-related fields.
The program comes as colleges and universities across the country struggle to develop faculty that reflect the nation's growing ethnic and cultural diversity.
"Cal State Northridge was honored to be selected to participate in the Pathways to the Professoriate initiative," said Elizabeth Say, dean of CSUN's College of Humanities. "We know well the quality of our students — what they sometimes lack is opportunity. This partnership with the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions and the Mellon Foundation will provide unparalleled opportunity for our students to achieve their educational goals. Together with our other institutional partners, we can begin to transform the professoriate to better reflect and serve the next generation of university students."
The problem of not having enough minorities in the professor pipeline cannot be fixed overnight Marybeth Gasman, director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, which will oversee the project.
"We see this program as a way to begin a fundamental change," Gasman said. "We hope this creates a strong pathway to graduate school for Latino students that will grow over time, with these students supporting one another, and one day becoming mentors themselves . . .article continues on CSUN Today