Penn students looking to tackle the lack of diversity among faculty on college campuses may break barriers through the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers.
The IRT is a program that recruits and mentors minority students who plan to pursue a degree in education, the humanities, social sciences or math and are interested in teaching.
Currently, the diversity among faculty in high schools and universities does not mirror the increased diversity in matriculating undergraduate and graduate students, IRT Director Asabe Poloma said.
“The problem is an extreme one when you look at the data,” she added.
IRT offers a four-week summer program to advise students of color and those “committed to diversity” on their graduate school applications.
The individual advice that students receive is effective, according to IRT alumna Juliana Partridge, a first-year Sociology graduate student, who received helpful feedback on her essays and personal statements.
Currently, the national attrition rate for doctoral candidates is 50 percent, Poloma said. However, IRT has a higher goal.
“We don’t want students to survive grad school, we want them to thrive,” she said.
The program includes a consortium of 41 schools — including the Ivy League universities — which have a commitment to recruit IRT students for graduate school.
According to an IRT press release, in its 20 years, IRT has supported more than 135 doctoral candidates and over 350 students in earning their Masters degree.
College junior Isola Brown is considering a career in education and thinking of applying to IRT.
Sixty percent of IRT alumni were the first in their generation to attend graduate school, Poloma added.
“I’m definitely aware of the [underrepresentation of minorities] in higher education. It’s nice to see a professor who looks like you and to talk to someone with a similar cultural background,” Brown said.
Poloma said that the underrepresentation in teaching may be due to the fact that well-educated minority students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds might be pressured by their families to opt for a high-paying career field, such as law or medicine.
Teach for America—a nonprofit organization that recruits recent college graduates to teach in low-income communities for two years —is also working to bridge the gap. TFA is committed to including a diverse group of teachers in their core, according to College senior Stephanie Lerner, TFA campus campaign coordinator.
“Diversity is a huge part of our mission. Recruiting at Penn, we get a diverse group, in terms of gender, socioeconomic backgrounds and race,” she said. “It’s important to have a diverse group of role models for students in the classroom.”
