Waterloo Region Record

Hiring more Black and Indigenous faculty is long overdue

Luisa D’Amato Luisa D’Amato is a Waterloo Regionbased staff columnist for The Record. Reach her via email: ldamato@therecord.com

Imagine you’re a Black or Indigenous child. None of the teachers in your elementary or high school look like you.

These teachers don’t encourage you to excel academically. In fact, they signal that they expect less from you than from others.

Imagine, on top of that, that the curriculum in your school is largely silent on the contributions to society and culture that were made by people who look like you.

Is it any wonder that you would be less likely than your white classmates to enter the world of academia — teaching, learning and research — as a profession?

For those that manage to get past those formidable roadblocks, even more difficulties lie ahead when so much of academic success, in everything from mentoring to employment to promotion, depends on who you know.

That, as described by Barrington Walker, Wilfrid Laurier University’s associate vicepresident: equity, diversity and inclusion, is part of the systemic racism that permeates Canadian education.

“Barriers really exist throughout the educational experiences of equity-deserving groups,” said Walker.

Understanding this situation helps explain why there are fewer Black and Indigenous students and professors than there should be in universities.

Only two per cent of Laurier’s faculty are Black. Less than two per cent are Indigenous. At University of Waterloo, less than half of one per cent of tenure-track faculty are Black.

And that’s why it’s a relief that the two universities in Waterloo are planning to hire 32 new Black and Indigenous professors between them, this year.

Wilfrid Laurier will hire at least six Black and six Indigenous faculty. University of Waterloo will hire 10 of each.

These will be brand-new extra hires, not taking away anyone else’s job, nor reducing anyone else’s shot at a position that may come vacant as a result of someone else leaving.

Department heads, deans, students, faculty and others will offer advice about how these scholars could best enrich scholarship and teaching beyond what the current programs offer, said Tony Vannelli,

Laurier’s provost and vice-president academic.

The process of embracing Indigenous scholarship will be steered by Darren Thomas, incoming associate vice-president: Indigenous initiatives, who begins his role in July.

As an example, there is no Indigenous professor at Laurier’s faculty of music. If there were, how might the curriculum and teaching open up and become more inclusive? How might that, in turn, attract a more diverse group of students?

“This is what we’re thinking about,” said Vannelli.

We know this kind of intervention works.

It has worked before to bring more women into science, math and engineering.

University of Waterloo’s president, Feridun Hamdullahpur, has focused on increasing the number of women in these fields.

It meant taking action on many different levels, including a woman as dean of engineering, and promoting other women to senior roles, It also meant encouraging girls in elementary school to attend science and technology-themed summer camps and contests.

In 2007, women made up 15 per cent of the University of Waterloo’s engineering students. By 2020 they were at 30 per cent.

That’s an exciting achievement. But Hamdullahpur cautioned: "These things just didn’t happen on their own. We had to have a proper strategy in place."

Exactly.

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2021-05-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-05-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

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