Narratives from Latina Professors in Higher Education

This article shares the lives of three Latina faculty members teaching in state colleges of education. Interviews revealed that the personal and professional experiences they encountered on a daily basis reflected tokenism in the academy, varying levels of support, and perceived burdens and expectations. All three women saw knowledge as contextual and often relied on feelings and intuition to describe and assess their lives in the academy. Recommendations for change within the academy are offered.

[1]  P. Gándara,et al.  Passing Through the Eye of the Needle: High-Achieving Chicanas , 1982 .

[2]  María de la Luz Reyes,et al.  Racism in Academia: The Old Wolf Revisited , 1988 .

[3]  A. Ramirez Racism toward Hispanics , 1988 .

[4]  Rudolfo Chávez Chávez,et al.  The leaning ivory tower : Latino professors in American universities , 1997 .

[5]  H. Garza Second-Class Academics: Chicano/Latino Faculty in U.S. Universities. , 1993 .

[6]  Jim Cummins,et al.  Empowering minority students: A framework for intervention. , 1986 .

[7]  Amado M. Padilla,et al.  Research news and Comment: Ethnic Minority Scholars; Research, and Mentoring: Current and Future Issues , 1994 .

[8]  C. Gilligan In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development , 2009 .

[9]  R. Fernandez,et al.  Educational Transitions of Whites and Mexican Americans. , 1982 .

[10]  M. A. Gibson,et al.  Minority Status and Schooling: A Comparative Study of Immigrant and Involuntary Minorities , 1991 .

[11]  M. Vasquez Confronting Barriers to the Participation of Mexican American Women in Higher Education , 1982 .

[12]  Sarah Nieves-Squires Hispanic Women: Making Their Presence on Campus Less Tenuous. , 1991 .

[13]  J. Ogbu Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-Cultural Perspective. , 1978 .

[14]  R. Bogdan Qualitative research for education : an introduction to theory and methods / by Robert C. Bogdan and Sari Knopp Biklen , 1997 .

[15]  P. Bronstein Challenges, rewards, and costs for feminist and ethnic minority scholars , 1993 .

[16]  A. Schneider Proportion of Minority Professors Inches Up to About 10 , 1997 .

[17]  J. Miller,et al.  Toward a new psychology of women , 1976 .

[18]  William G. Tierney,et al.  Building Communities of Difference: Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century , 1993 .

[19]  E. Bensimon,et al.  Promotion and Tenure: Community and Socialization in Academe , 1996 .

[20]  J. Blackwell,et al.  Mentoring: An Action Strategy for Increasing Minority Faculty. , 1989 .

[21]  Beverly Harris-Schenz Helping with the Bootstraps: The Mentor's Task. , 1990 .