ustxtxb_obs_1979_05_11_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

Table 2 Faculty at Texas public colleges and universities Fall 1977 Total Women Blqck Hispanic Senior colleges & universities 21,346 5,664 840 578 Junior colleges 13,152 4,878 611 746 Total 34,498 10,542 1,451 1,324 Based on: Coordinating Board data, unpublished as of May 1, 1979. Figures include faculty at predominantly black institutions. Table 3 Faculty, by rank, at public senior colleges and universities Fall 1977 Total Women Black Hispanic Professor 3,495 275 96 42 Associate professor 3,350 461 116 73 Assistant professor 4,060 1,117 260 130 Instructor 2,184 930 245 84 Based on: Coordinating Board data, unpublished as of May 1, 1979. Figures include faculty at predominantly black institutions. Totals for adjunct and visiting professors, teaching assistants, and lecturers are omitted. studies, but virtually none in physics, for example. We want reasonable representation of minorities on the faculty in all the fields.” But while UT says it wants “reasonable representation of minorities,” other universities are doing something about it. At UCLA, for example, the affirmative action push comes from the administration, from the vice chancellor, who maintains a faculty development program to assist departments in bringing in junior-level minority and women faculty members. UCLA also has a junior faculty dissertation fellowship to attract and train minorities at the Ph.D. level. And each department must give an accounting of its affirmative action efforts to the administration which in turn reports to the state system. Because of this pressure from above, there is a genuine effort in most UCLA departments to recruit minorities. Though the program varies from campus to campus, the thrust is the same statewide in the California system. A chicano from Texas, Tomas Rivera, currently executive vice president at UT-El Paso, was recently chosen to become chancellor of UC-Riverside. “To many Californians, Texas has a stigma attached as being nonprogressive, status quo,” says Arnold Vento, UT Mexican-American studies director. “There are many qualified chicano scholars in the East and on the West Coast,” says Vento. “UT is in a position to compete nationally for these top scholars and if we want them we can get them.” Juan-Gomez Quinones, UCLA history professor and director of chicano studies, agrees with that assessment: “UT is a public university with no budget problems compared to many other schools; Texas is a healthy state financially with considerable numbers of minorities. If other schools can launch programs, then why can’t UT?” He adds: “UCLA administrators have been emphatic about urging deans and departments to search very thoroughly for qualified minorities. Simply making announcements in a spectrum of publications fulfills requirements of federal affirmative action guidelines, but it is a different matter when you actually go out and make a hard search. When you do that, places that might not seem as attractive as others can get [minority] faculty.” But UT still uses a decentralized recruiting process, leaving affirmative action largely to the whims of the departments, even though HEW in 1975 stipulated that a “universitywide” recruitment program should be established. UT does have an office responsible for advising departments on minority recruit pendent upon the approval of the academic departments from which the center draws its faculty. “We have responsibility but no authority, and nobody with any authority is interested,” says Warfield. The combined budgets of AfroAmerican and Mexican-American tance,” he says, compared to the budgets . Even the Middle Eastern studies proeither Afro-American or MexicanAmerican studies. Warfield believes there is a basic disbelief in white academia that blacks and browns are legitimate population groups to study. “But this is a great time, without so much of the past pressures and tensions, to get on with the business of analyzing Afro-American and Mexican-American affairsissues that are going to be dealt with in this country sooner or later,” he says. A question of commitment But while Warfield calls the lack of regard for ethnic studies a national problem and admits that the programs are faring better at UT than at some Eastern schools where they have simply been axed, he feels the university has fallen far behind , overall in recruiting minority scholars. “As far as I’m concerned, there is no minority recruitment effort on campus,” he-says. UT’s vice president for academic affairs, William Hays, admits UT has trouble recruiting minority faculty, but says the difficulty is no greater at UT than at other schools. Hays maintains that the shortage of qualified minority scholars in a variety of fields hurts the university’s affirmative action efforts. “You can find a lot of qualified blacks in education and a lot of chicanos in Mexican-American