Diversity Lacking in Expos Program

In her Expository writing course on African-American literature this spring, preceptor Suzanne Lane is unlikely to recount experiences from her own life as an ethnic minority.

That is because Lane is white. And so are all but two of her 41 colleagues in the expository writing program.

And though Lane has a PhD in African-American studies, even she admits that a degree is not a substitute for personal experience.

"Who we are is shaped by cultural forces, and race can be one of those," she says. "There is no point in thinking that that I would teach the class in the same way as an African American person would."

The expository writing department has for years been devoid of minority representation, but not for lack of trying.

"[Diversity] is an ongoing problem, not simply for Expos, but for the University," says Director of Undergraduate Education Susan Pedersen. "The answer for Expos is certainly going to be to continue to try to make the position of preceptor more attractive and continue to recruit vigorously."

But the problem of minority recruiting is not one that is easily solved, says Sosland Director of Expository Writing Nancy Sommers.

Expos officials are aware of the numbers and have been recruiting without success for year.

The program advertises its positions in journals like the Black Scholar and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Sommers pays visits to campuses to recruit prospective candidates.

But although the department has over 300 applicants each year for a handful of open positions, Sommers says few minorities apply. Each of the past five years has seen only two or three minorities advance to the final round.

"Minority recruitment has been a mission and goal on our faculty," Sommers says. "They're just not applying."

Expos officials say their program is forced to compete--frequently unsuccessfully--for minority applicants who are also offered tenure track appointments.

"Minority candidates who are very good teachers are very hot commodities," says Associate Director of Expository Writing Gordon Harvey. "In a lot of ways we can't compete for them, and we tend to lose them."

Snow White Legacy

T

he Expos department has consistently had problems with minority representation.

T

Sommers says the nature of Expos appointments makes it difficult to interest qualified minority professors.

Professors are hired yearly and given one-year contracts, which can then be renewed for up to five years. Most preceptors stay with the program for only three years. None are guaranteed long-term job security with Expos.

"We have a lot of difficulty recruiting and attracting candidates because the jobs we offer are not tenure track," Sommers says. "When a minority is offered a tenure track job they are likely to take it over ours."

And for that reason it is difficult to do anything about the supply of minority candidates, Lane says. Although Lane turned down two tenure track offers to work in the Expos department, she says not many candidates in her position would do the same thing.

"If you can get a tenure track position, you will probably prefer that, but people may come here who could have gotten a tenure track

position somewhere else," she says.

Harvey says the department will not hire unqualified candidates just to increase the number of minorities. "We have occasionally run across minority candidates who haven't finished their PhDs," Harvey says. "But it wouldn't be quite fair to Harvard students if we hired people who hadn't

done any teaching."

But Harvey notes that writing is a field that allows students to see past color.

"Writing crosses racial lines in a lot of ways," he says. "We have a very open and generous faculty."

But when one or two people are not like the others, it is virtually impossible for them to go unnoticed. Harvey says the department has done all in its power to make those preceptors feel at home and by all accounts, they are.

"There's no way around that issue, you would certainly notice the fact that people are different, at least in the short term," Harvey says. "We would be very glad to have them and we do our best to make them feel welcome."

Color Blind Department

Preceptors overwhelmingly say that the content of their classes is not affected by their race and say that students can see past their skin color to get a lot out of a class.

But they also admit that there are elements that are lost when first hand experience is not present.

Preceptor Daniel Bosch wishes the Faculty was more diverse, but says the situation is nothing new.

"In my first year I taught a course where I taught Nigerian plays and I'm a white person who's never been to Africa," Bosch says. "Someone else who's been to Africa might have been able to present the material better."

Lane says that though the benefits of a preceptor with real life experience on racial issues are obvious, that doesn't necessarily make that person a better teacher.

A lot, she says, has to do with student-teacher interaction, and a white teacher can bring up equally important issues.

But as Harvey points out, there is no substitute for the real thing.

"It would certainly would be better to have an African American teaching an African American literature course," he says. "Those are the people who know the stuff inwardly. There's the credibility factor, and at some point you are talking about an experience that you have never had."

But those in the program note that Expos offers many courses dealing with issues of race and ethnicity, even though its faculty is almost all white.

Expos preceptor Carolyn Austin says that though there are not many racial minorities on the Expos faculty, there is a great deal of diversity among their disciplines.

"The majority of us here are white, and very strongly so," Austin says. "But we value very much how much the administrators encourage us to take on issues of diversity and racial distinction, but as far as the numbers game goes we have to look into it much more."

Preceptor Jody Lisberger teaches about race, homophobia and class in her course on Violence and Non-Violence.

"Our courses...are probably more diverse than any other department at Harvard," she says. "There's huge diversity in Expos, and you can discern that by looking at the different subjects that are taught and the different ways they are taught."

Both of the minority preceptors currently in the program argue that, although they've noticed Expos' lack of diversity, it doesn't take a minority instructor to teach racial issues.

"It seems to me that's kind of limiting to the instructor, that someone like me would only be asked to teach what I represent," Mohammed T. Nezam-Mafi says, who teaches the Expos course "Literature and the Other."

For preceptor Soo La Kim, being in the minority is nothing new, but she says she is dealing with it in her own way. She says it is difficult to determine whether the racial profile of the Faculty impacts students learning.

"I've certainly noted the lack of racial diversity," she says. "But there's a wide range of topics and with qualified people to teach them."

For the future, Harvey says that the department does not have a concrete plan to address diversity at the moment, but minority recruitment is at the top of Expos' priority list.

"We will probably revisit the minority hiring issue, but we've had a lot of experience with this and we tend to know what happens," he says.

Pedersen says that though this is a University-wide problem, Expos is in need of specific attention.

"We have been working hard in recent years both to try to develop the pool of talented young minority scholars and to make competitive offers in departments and in Expos," Pedersen says. "But this is a difficult job."