Assessing Institutionalized Bias

Ideally, higher education systems are meritocracies in which advancement or promotion is based on demonstrated accomplishment and scholarly impact. “Merit” is believed to be associated with innate intellectual ability, dedication to learning and knowledge generation, mastery of a field of study, and recognition by others of comparable training and academic standing. Evaluations of accomplishment are dutifully (and often wishfully) believed to be wholly objective despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately, implicit bias and other barriers to inclusion are pervasive within meritocracies. For members of marginalized groups, their social identity may diminish how their accomplishments are perceived and valued; conversely, the accomplishments of those with privileged identities may be over-valued. Moreover, what counts as “valuable” is itself not objective or neutral but rather reflects socially-constructed and culturally-specific priorities. Because academic merit and reward systems, as well as local cultures, can intentionally as well as unintentionally reinforce and hence perpetuate bias and barriers to inclusion, one of our UC Davis ADVANCE initiatives centered on review of all policies and practices affecting faculty advancement. We appraised the potential for bias in hiring, promotion, progression, and retention of faculty. We also evaluated the importance of culture in replicating barriers to inclusion.

How Gender Stereotypes May Limit Female Faculty Advancement in Communication Sciences and Disorders

Purpose The field of communication sciences and disorders (CSD) faces a critical shortage of the faculty essential to train the future workforce of speech-language pathologists and audiologists. Despite a predominance of women in the field, men receive doctoral degrees, tenure status, academic leadership positions, and American Speech-Language-Hearing Association awards at disproportionately higher rates than women. The purpose of this review is to explore how implicit gender bias may contribute to female faculty advancement, including current and projected faculty workforce shortages, and to propose tangible solutions. Method The authors present proportions of men and women who receive doctoral degrees, advance to each faculty rank, receive tenure status, hold department chairs in CSD, and receive American Speech-Language-Hearing Association honors and awards. They review ways in which cultural stereotypes give rise to implicit gender bias and discuss myriad ways that implicit gender bias may influence the decisions of students considering an academic career in CSD and their career trajectories. Conclusions Cultural stereotypes about men and women lead to implicit gender bias that may have real consequences for female faculty advancement in CSD. Such implicit bias can influence career selection and outcomes within the field in multiple ways. To ensure that CSD continues to attract top talent and maintain a robust pipeline of future faculty in doctoral training programs, the field must recognize the existence of implicit gender bias and implement evidence-based strategies to minimize its potentially damaging effects on the future of the profession.

The preferences of Chinese LIS journal articles in citing works outside the discipline

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand how Chinese library and information science (LIS) journal articles cite works from outside the discipline (WOD) to identify the impact of knowledge import from outside the discipline on LIS development. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the Chinese LIS’ preferences in citing WOD by employing bibliometrics and machine learning techniques. Findings Chinese LIS citations to WOD account for 29.69 percent of all citations, and they rise over time. Computer science, education and communication are the most frequently cited disciplines. Under the categorization of Biglan model, Chinese LIS prefers to cite WOD from soft science, applied science or nonlife science. In terms of community affiliation, the cited authors are mostly from the academic community, but rarely from the practice community. Mass media has always been a citation source that is hard to ignore. There is a strong interest of Chinese LIS in citing emerging topics. Practical implications This paper can be implemented in the reformulation of Chinese LIS knowledge system, the promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration, the development of LIS library collection and faculty advancement. It may also be used as a reference to develop strategies for the global LIS. Originality/value This paper fills the research gap in analyzing citations to WOD from Chinese LIS articles and their impacts on LIS, and recommends that Chinese LIS should emphasize on knowledge both on technology and people as well as knowledge from the practice community, cooperate with partners from other fields, thus to produce knowledge meeting the demands from library and information practice as well as users.

Understanding Faculty Collaboration and Productivity: A Case Study

Research productivity has been always an important part of every academic’s job, since it has a profound effect on faculty promotion and tenure decisions. In addition, some scholars believe that co-authorship between faculty members has a great impact on their academic life and faculty advancement. Since 2005, the Ministry of Education of Taiwan (MOE) has developed two university programs and evaluation policies for improving the competitiveness and internationalization of Taiwan universities, and has clearly stated that there is a strong relationship between faculty promotion and research performance. However, none of them has used social network analysis (SNA) to examine research productivity and co-authorship under two university programs and evaluation policies from MOE in Taiwan. Therefore, in this study, we first uses SNA to analyze the research productivity, collaboration patterns, and publication strategies of faculty members in a Management Information Systems (MIS) department at a national university in Taiwan. Then, we used D3, a well-known drawing tool to create data visualization using JavaScript libraries, to visualize and discuss how these two university programs and evaluation policies from the MOE affected these patterns and strategies. We hope that our study not only provides beneficial information to the MIS department, but can be treated as an important source for MOE committees in their future adjustment of university programs and policies.